THE  HEREDITY  (.. 


DAVID 


• 


ORDAN 


THE  HEREDITY  OF 
RICHARD  ROE 


A    DISCUSSION    OF    THE 
PRINCIPLES   OF  EUGENICS 


BY 


DAVID   STARR  JORDAN 

PRESIDENT  OF 
LELAND  STANFORD  JE.  UNIVERSITY 


BOSTON 

AMERICAN   UNITARIAN   ASSOCIATION 
191 1 


Copyright,  1911 
American  Unitarian  Association 


naf 

URE 
5145264 


Look  here  upon  thy  brother  Geffrey's  face; 
These  eyes,  these  brows  were  moulded  out  of  his; 
This  little  abstract  doth  contain  that  large 
Which  died  in  Geffrey,  and  the  hand  of  time 
Shall  draw  this  brief  into  as  large  a  volume. 

Shakspeare:  "King  John.' 

Ever  the  March  of  History 
Is  strewn  with  cast-off"  finery 
And  the  Way  of  Common  Things 
Is  cluttered  with  the  Pomp  of  Kings. 


PREFATORY   NOTE 


EUGENICS  (euytea,  good  birth) 
is  the  science  and  the  art  of  being 
well  born.  In  the  words  of  Francis  Gal- 
ton,  who  devised  the  term,  it  is  the 
"study  of  agencies  that  may  improve  or 
impair  the  racial  qualities  of  future  gen- 
erations, either  mentally  or  physically." 

The  knowledge  of  the  science  of 
Eugenics  will  sooner  or  later  develop 
the  art.  Knowledge  will  lead  to  better 
men.  At  present,  through  the  agencies 
of  charities  which  perpetuate  the  weak, 
or  war  which  eliminates  the  strong,  and 
of  an  education  which  makes  celibacy  a 
condition  of  success,  we  are  in  a  degree 
reversing  the  processes  of  natural  selec- 
tion. If  the  fittest  do  not  serve  as  par- 
ents, the  next  generations  will  not  in- 
herit fitness. 

In  the  present  discussion,  Richard 
Roe,  a  familiar  figure  in  legal  practice, 
serves  as  a  lay  figure  of  heredity,  and  in 
tracing  his  career  some  of  the  leading 
facts  and  principles  of  Eugenics  are 
brought  under  notice.  It  may  be  noted 


that  a  preliminary  essay  bearing  the 
same  title  was  published  in  "Footnotes 
to  Evolution"  (Appleton,  1898),  a  vol- 
ume now  out  of  print. 

D.  S.  J. 

Stanford  University, 

July,  1911. 


CONTENTS 


Page 
THE  GATE  OF  GIFTS  i 

INHERITANCE  OF  HUMANITY     ...  5 

RACE  CHARACTERS      ....  6 

INDIVIDUAL  CHARACTERS  ...  7 

THE  GERM  CELL       ....  9 

PROTOPLASM  .  .  .  .11 

CHROMATIN  AND  CHROMOSOMES  .  .          1 1 

NATURE  DIVIDES  UNEQUALLY  .  .          i4 

ATAVISM        .  .  .  .  .14 

THE  MID-PARENT      .  .  .  .15 

THE  THOROUGH-BRED  .  .  .19 

CHANGES  THROUGH  EXPERIENCE  .  .          21 

INHERITANCE  OF  ACQUIRED  CHARACTERS  .          23 

HEREDITY  COMPLETES  No  CHARACTER  .          25 

BLOOD  WILL  TELL     .  .  .  .26 

WHAT  BLOOD  WILL  TELL      .  .  .29 

NATURE  AND  NURTURE  .  .  .31 

EUGENICS  AND  EUTHENICS        .  .  -35 

INFLUENCE  OF  BIRTHPLACE       .  .  .36 

PRENATAL  INFLUENCES  .  .  .38 

TRANSMISSION  OF  IMPAIRED  VITALITY  .  .          42 

IBSEN'S  GHOSTS  .  .  .  .42 

LAWS  OF  NATURE       .  .  .  .44 

MENDELISM    .  .  .  .  .46 


Page 

BATESON  ON  MENDELISM           .  .  .47 

KELLOGG  ON  MENDELISM          .  .  -53 

DAVENPORT  ON  MENDELIAN  INHERITANCE  .          54 

LAST  WORD  ON  HEREDITY  UNSAID  .  .          61 

DETERMINATION  OF  SEX            .  .  .63 

FINAL  FORMULA  OF  HEREDITY  .  .          66 

POTENTIALITIES  NOT    CHARACTER  .  .          67 

THE  HIGHER   HEREDITY          .  .  .68 

THE  UNITY  OF  THE  EGO        .  .  .68 

THE  EGO  A  CO-OPERATION     .  .  .69 

FAME  NOT  GREATNESS               .  .  .70 

THE  MOTHER'S  PART               .  .  .71 

SELF-MASTERY             .              .  .  .72 

EUGENICS       .              .              .  .  -73 

PARASITIC   DISEASES     .               .  .  .74 

DAVENPORT  ON  THE  RED  PLAGUE  .  .          74 

EFFECTS  OF  ALCOHOLISM           .  .  -75 

DAVENPORT  ON  FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS  .  .          77 

DEGENERATION             .              .  .  .82 

DECLINE  IN  RANGE  OF  ACTIVITIES  .  .          83 

QUIESCENT  ANIMALS   .              .  .  .83 

PARASITIC  ANIMALS     .               .  .  .84 

SACCULINA     .              .              .  .  .84 
ANIMAL  PAUPERISM  AND  HUMAN  PAUPERISM       .          85 

LAW  OF  COMPENSATION            .  .  .86 

RACE  DECLINE  NOT  COLLECTIVE  .  .         87 


Page 

WITHERED  BRANCHES                 .  .  .90 

OLD  AGE       .               .               .  •  '«<•  .          90 

RACE  DECADENCE        .               .  .  .91 

CHARITY        .               .              .  .  .91 

THE  CRETINS  OF  AOSTA           .  .  .92 

ISOLATION       .               .              .  .  .99 

THE  JUKES     .               .               .  .  .99 

THE  POOR  WHITES     .              .  .  .100 

MUTUAL  HELP            .              .  .  .102 

THE  EASY  WORLD     .               .  .  .102 

POVERTY  AND  PAUPERISM          .  .  .105 

THE  HUMAN   SACCULINA  INACTIVITY     .  .107 

McCuLLOCH    ON    THE    "TRIBE    OF  IsHMAEL  "       .            109 

PAUPERS  AS  PARASITES               .  .  .115 

PAUPERISM  A  FACTOR  IN  GOVERNMENT  .        117 

CORRUPTION  FUND  OF  PUBLIC  CHARITY  .        1 1 8 

FOREIGN   IMMIGRATION               .  .  .119 

ASSISTED  IMMIGRATION               .  .  .121 

NATIONAL  LIFE  OF  ENGLAND  .  .        122 

FREEDOM  WHICH  is  THRALDOM  .  .125 

FUTURE  OF  THE  REPUBLIC       .  .  .125 

SLAVERY         .               .               .  .                       1 26 

THE  SLUMS                  .              .  .  .126 

THE  TROPICS              .               .  .  .127 

LUXURY         .               .              .  .                       i 29 

THE  HIGHER  FOOLISHNESS        .  .  .130 


Page 

THE  MATTOID  .  .  .  .131 

THE  NORMAL  MAN    .  .  .  133 

GENIUS  .  .  .  .  .134 

DECADENT  LITERATURE  .  .  .136 

OPPORTUNITY  WITHOUT  TRAINING  .  .        137 

THE  DROOPING  SPIRIT  .  .  .138 

NORDAU'S  DEGENERATION         .  .  .139 

SENSATION  AND  ACTION  .  .  .141 

THE  POWER  OF  ATTENTION    .  .  .143 

DEFECTS  OF  MIND      .  .  .  .144 

HYSTERIA       .  .  .  .  .144 

THE  MIND  OF  NATIONS  .  .  .147 

INSTITUTIONS  .  .  .  .148 

MENTAL  PAUPERISM    .  .  .  .149 

ARTIFICIAL  SELECTION  .  .  .150 

THE  FINE  ART  OF  BREEDING  .  .152 

BREEDING  OF  THE  SUPERMAN  .  .        153 

COUNTING  ONE'S  ANCESTORS     .  .  .154 

LINEAGE  OF  A  LITTLE  GIRL    .  .  .157 

ALL  ENGLISHMEN  OF  ROYAL  LINEAGE  .  .        158 

PRIMOGENITURE  .  .  .  .160 

ORIGIN  OF  THE  ENGLISH  CHARACTER  .  .        161 

THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  EXISTING  .  .        163 

THE  WHOLESOME  WORLD        .  .  .164 


THE  HEREDITY  OF 
RICHARD  ROE 


The  Gate 
of  Gifts 


THE  HEREDITY  OF 
RICHARD  ROE 

When  Richard  Roe  was  born,  "the 
gate  of  gifts  was  closed"  to  him.  It  was 
in  fact  closed  long  before  that, 
at  the  moment  of  the  blending 
of  the  two  germ  cells  (ovum 
and  sperm-cell)  from  the  min- 
gling of  which  his  own  personality  arose.  In 
the  instant  of  conception,  the  gifts  of  life  are 
granted.  Nothing  more  comes  of  itself. 
Henceforth  he  must  expect  nothing  new  and 
must  devote  himself  to  the  development  of 
the  heritage  he  has  received  from  his  father 
and  mother.  In  this  he  has  a  lifelong  task. 
He  must  bring  its  discordant  elements  into 
some  sort  of  harmony.  He  must  form  his 
Ego  by  the  union  of  these  elements.  He 
must  soften  down  their  contradictions.  He 
must  train  his  elements  of  strength  to  be  help- 
ful to  some  one  in  some  way,  that  others  may 
be  helpful  to  him.  He  must  give  his  weak 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

powers  exercise,  so  that  their  weakness  shall 
not  bring  him  disaster  in  the  competition  of 
life.  For  it  is  likely  that  somewhere,  some- 
how, it  will  be  proved  that  no  chain  is 
stronger  than  its  weakest  link.  Other  powers 
not  too  weak,  nor  over  strong,  Richard  Roe 
must  perforce  neglect,  because  in  the  hurry  of 
life  there  is  not  time  for  every  desirable 
thing.  In  these  ways  the  character  of  Rich- 
ard Roe's  inheritance  is  steadily  changing 
under  his  hands.  As  he  grows  older,  one 
after  another  of  the  careers  that  might  have 
been  his,  the  men  he  might  have  been,  vanish 
from  his  path  forever.  On  the  other  hand, 
by  steady  usage,  a  slender  thread  of  capacity 
has  so  grown  as  to  become  like  strong  cord- 
age. Thus  Richard  Roe  learns  anew  the  old 
parable  of  the  talents.  The  power  he  hid  in 
a  napkin  is  taken  away  altogether,  while  that 
which  is  placed  at  usury  is  returned  a  hun- 
dredfold. He  achieves  at  last,  in  greater  or 
less  degree,  "the  higher  heredity,"  the  fate 
that  each  man  must  create  for  himself. 

Now,    for  the  purpose  of  this   discus- 


[2] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

sion,  you,  gentle  reader,  "who  are  an  achieve- 
ment of  importance,"  or  I,  ungentle  writer, 
concerning  whom  the  less  said  the  better, 
may  be  Richard  Roe.  So  might  any  of  your 
friends  or  acquaintances.  So  far  as  methods 
and  principles  are  concerned,  Richard  Roe 
may  be  your  lapdog  or  your  favorite  horse — 
or  even  your  b$te  noir,  if  you  cherish  beasts 
of  that  color.  Any  beast  will  do.  With 
Algernon  Fitzclarence  de  Courcy  or  Clara 
Vere  de  Vere,  with  Sambo  or  Caesar  the  case 
would  be  just  the  same.  Let  Richard  Roe 
stand  at  present  for  the  lay  figure  of  heredity 
— or,  if  it  seems  best  to  you  to  humanize  this 
discussion,  let  him  be  a  man. 

"Almost  every  one  of  us,"  observes 
Mr.  Chesterton,  "is  a  rate-payer,  an  immor- 
tal soul,  an  Englishman,  a  baptized  person, 
a  mammal,  a  minor  poet,  a  juryman,  a  mar- 
ried man,  a  bicyclist,  a  purchaser  of  news- 
papers, a  critic  of  Mr.  Alfred  Austin."  All 
this  Richard  Roe  may  have  been,  or  he  may 
have  diverged  at  any  point  but  one  or 
possibly  two  along  the  line.  But  whatever 
and  wherever  his  personal  relation,  whatever 


[3] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

can  be  true  of  anybody  may  be  true  of  Rich- 
ard Roe. 

And  whatever  our  Richard  Roe  may  be, 
his  nature  was  fixed  by  that  of  his  parents. 
"If  we  know  ourselves  well,"  according  to 
J.  M.  Barrie,  "we  know  our  parents  also." 
This  is  another  version  of  the  old  Shinto 
maxim  of  Japan:  "Let  men  know  by  your 
deeds  who  were  your  ancestors." 

Richard  Roe  is  himself  but  "an  elonga- 
tion" or  continuation  of  his  parents'  life,  as 
Erasmus  Darwin  said  a  century  ago.  He  was 
the  elongation  of  two  lives,  and  behind  them, 
of  thousands  of  others,  else  he  could  not  have 
individuality  and  be  really  himself.  But  for 
all  that  he  is  a  chip  off  the  old  blocks.  He 
is  made  of  many  chips  from  many  old  blocks. 

Thus,  as  man,  Richard  Roe  enters  life 
with  a  series  of  possibilities  and  tendencies 
granted  him  by  heredity.  Each  one  is  held 
in  some  fashion  in  the  mystic  nucleus  of  his 
first  germ  cell.  Let  us  examine  this  series. 
Let  us  analyze  the  contents  of  this  pack 
which  he  is  to  carry  through  life  to  the  gates 
of  the  Golden  City. 


THE   HEREDITY   OF   RICHARD   ROE 

First,  from  his  parents,  men  and  women, 
Richard  Roe  has  inherited  humanity,  the 
parts  and  organs  and  feelings  of 
a  man.  "Hath  he  not  eyes? 
Hath  he  not  hands,  organs,  di- 
mensions, senses,  affections,  pas- 


Inheritance 

of 

Humanity 


sions?  fed  with  the  same  food,  hurt  with  the 
same  weapons,  subject  to  the  same  diseases, 
healed  by  the  same  means,  warmed  and 
cooled  by  the  same  winter  and  summer"  as 
you  or  I  or  any  other  king  or  beggar  we  know 
of?  "If  you  prick  us,  do  we  not  bleed?  if 
you  tickle  us,  do  we  not  laugh?  if  you  poison 
us,  do  we  not  die?  if  you  wrong  us,  shall  we 
not  revenge?"  All  this,  the  common  heri- 
tage of  Jew  or  Gentile,  goes  to  the  making  of 
Richard  Roe.  His  ancestors  on  both  sides 
have  been  human,  and  that  for  many  and 
many  generations,  so  that  "the  knowledge  of 
man  runneth  not  to  the  contrary."  If  they 
had  been  dogs  he  would  have  been  a  dog  like 
them.  Even  the  prehuman  ancestry,  dimly 
seen  by  the  faith  of  science,  had  in  it  the  po- 
tentialities of  manhood  else  it  would  not 
have  risen  to  produce  him.  Descended  for 


[5] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

countless  ages  from  man  and  woman,  man 
born  of  woman  Richard  Roe  surely  is. 

We    may    go    farther    with    certainty. 
Richard  Roe  will  follow  the  race  type  of  his 
parentage.       If    he    is    Anglo- 


l&ce 
Characters 


Saxon,  as  his  name  seems  to  de- 
note, all  Anglo-Saxon  by  blood, 
he  will  be  all  Anglo-Saxon  in 
quality.  To  his  characters  of  common  hu- 
manity we  may  add  those  common  to  the 
race.  He  will  not  be  a  negro  nor  Mon- 
golian, and  he  will  have  some  traits  and  ten- 
dencies not  often  found  in  the  Latin  races 
of  southern  Europe.  To  be  sure,  Anglo- 
Saxon  is  a  blend,  of  course.  "Saxon  and 
Norman  and  Dane  are  we."  But  all  other 
races  are  likewise  blends.  The  Latin  stock 
has  many  sources.  The  Mongolian  is  no  sin- 
gle race,  and  there  are  as  many  sorts  of 
negroes  as  of  chickens  or  of  sheep. 

But  his  friends  will  know  Richard  Roe 
best  not  by  the  great  mass  of  his  human  traits 
nor  by  his  race  characteristics:  these  may 
be  predominant  and  ineradicable,  but  they 
are  not  distinctive.  Many  other  men  on 


[6] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

the  street  show  the  same  proclivities,  and 
from  the  rest  he  must  be  known  by  his  pecu- 
liarities, by  his  specialities  and 


Individual 
Characters 


his  deficiencies.  Within  the 
narrowest  type  there  is  room  for 
infinite  play  in  the  minor  varia- 
tions. For  almost  any  possible  series  of 
these,  Richard  Roe  could  find  warrant  in  his 
ancestry.  His  combination  of  them  must 
be  his  own.  That  is  his  individuality. 
Hue  of  the  eyes,  color  of  the  hair,  length 
of  the  nose,  shade  of  skin,  form  of  ears, 
size  of  hands,  character  of  thumb  prints,  in 
all  these  and  ten  thousand  other  particulars 
some  allotment  must  fall  to  Richard  Roe, 
and  this  allotment  must  be  all  his  own. 

Nature  does  not  repeat  herself, — "al- 
most but  never  quite."  She  has  "broken  the 
die"  in  moulding  each  of  his  ancestors.  She 
will  break  the  die  with  him.  She  will  make 
no  servile  copy  of  any  of  her  works.  By  the 
law  of  sex,  Richard  Roe  has  twice  as  many 
ancestors  as  his  father  or  mother  had. 
Therefore  these  could  give  him  anything  they 
had  severally  received  from  their  own 


[7] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

parents.  They  could  give  him  nothing  else. 
But  each  one  could  not  give  his  all,  only  half 
at  most.  The  hereditary  gifts  must  be  di- 
vided in  some  way,  else  Richard  Roe  would 
be  speedily  overborne  by  them.  He  could 
not  have  twice  as  many  qualities  as  his 
father.  There  would  be  no  body  left  on 
which  to  fasten  them.  The  number  of  traits 
one  man  may  have  cannot  be  doubled  with 
each  succeeding  generation.  Nature  can  only 
double  half.  Furthermore,  any  system  of  di- 
vision Nature  may  adopt  could  only  be  on  the 
average  an  equal  division.  Richard  Roe's 
father  might  supply  half  his  endowment  of 
inborn  characters,  his  mother  furnishing  the 
other  half.  Nature  tries  to  arrange  for  some 
partition  like  this,  but  she  can  never  divide 
evenly,  and  some  qualities  will  not  bear  divi- 
sion. Richard  Roe's  share  forms  a  sort  of 
mosaic,  made  partly  of  unchanged  characters 
standing  side  by  side  in  new  combinations, 
partly  a  mixture  of  characters,  in  part  of 
characters  in  perfect  blending,  in  part  of 
characters  dominant  and  recessive,  the  one 
set  evident,  the  other  hidden,  to  be  revived, 
it  may  be,  in  the  next  generation. 


[8] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

The  physical  reason  for  all  this  the  phy- 
siologists are  just  beginning  to  trace.     The 
machinery  of  division  and  inte- 


Tbe  Germ 
Cell 


gration  they  find  in  the  germ 
cell  itself — the  egg  and  its  male 
cognate.  In  all  animals,  the 
ripened  germ  cell,  male  or  female,  is  not  a 
complete  cell.  It  is  only  half  a  cell,  with  half 
the  nucleus  and  but  half  the  normal  number 
of  chromosomes,  or  bearers  of  heredity, 
which  the  nucleus  of  the  cell  contains.  At  the 
instant  of  conception,  these  two  half  cells 
join,  the  two  nuclei  are  blended  and  the  result 
of  the  union  is  the  complete  human  cell. 
From  this  in  the  long  process  of  development 
through  cell  division,  tissue  feeding  and  tis- 
sue wasting,  Richard  Roe  at  last  emerges.  At 
the  same  time  we  find  that  Nature's  love  of 
variation  is  operative  even  here.  She  has 
never  yet  made  two  eggs  or  two  sperm  cells 
exactly  alike.  We  use  the  word  "cell"  for 
want  of  a  better  one.  Each  cell  is  really  a 
centre  of  energy,  a  little  life  battery,  for 
which  reason  Professor  Sachs  once  suggested 
the  choicer  word,  "Energide."  These  little 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

energides  are  mostly  stowed  away  in  cell 
walls,  built  of  coarser  substance.  But  the 
real  thing  is  the  energy-bearing  protoplasm, 
not  the  cell  walls  in  which  it  lies  for  protec- 
tion. 

Nature  can  never  divide  even  the 
simplest  structure  without  getting  on  one 
side  a  bit  more  than  on  the  other.  The  germ 
cell,  male  or  female — and  the  two  are  alike 
in  all  characters  essential  to  this  discussion — 
is  one  of  the  vital  units  or  body  cells  set 
apart  for  a  special  purpose.  All  animals  and 
all  plants  are  made  up  of  one  cell  or  of  co- 
operating cells  or  centres  of  energy.  The 
germ  cell  is  not  in  its  essence,  fundamentally 
different  in  structure  or  in  origin.  But  in  its 
growth  it  is  capable  of  repeating  the  whole 
organism  from  which  it  came,  "with  the 
precision  of  a  work  of  art."  This  the  other 
cells  cannot  do,  at  least  not  in  the  more 
complex  organisms.  A  slice  of  potato  will 
grow  into  a  new  potato-plant.  A  slice 
of  dog  will  not  develop  into  a  new  dog.  This 
is  because  the  potato  is  relatively  simple.  The 
dog  is  more  complex,  each  part  dependent  on 
the  support  of  each  of  the  others. 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

The  germ  cell  is  made  up  of  protoplasm, 
a  jelly-like  substance,  appearing  simple,  which 
it  is  not.     It  is,  in  fact,  not  a 


Protoplasm       "substance"   at  all,  but  a  struc- 

'     ture   of   gelatinous   ribbons   and 

flecks  of  foam,  as  complex  as  anything  in 
Nature.  In  connection  with  this  structure  all 
known  phenomena  of  life  are  shown.  In- 
side the  germ  cell,  or  in  any  other  cell,  is  a 
smaller  cellule  called  the  nucleus.  Here  is 
the  centre  of  heredity.  With  the  nucleus  lies 
most  of  the  process  of  inheritance.  Its 
structure  in  the  higher  animals  is  a  compli- 
cated arrangement  of  loops  and  bands,  the 
material  of  which  these  are  made  being 
called  chromatin.  This  name,  chromatin,  is 
given  because  its  substance  takes  a  deeper 
stain  or  color  (chroma  in  Greek)  than  ordi- 
nary protoplasm  or  other  cell  materials. 

The  units  of  chromatin,  the  loops  and 
bands  and  curved  bodies,  we  call  chromo- 
somes. In  each  animal  or  plant 
these  exist  in  a  fixed  number.  In 
the  more  complex  organisms  the 
numbers  generally  run  highest. 


Chromatin 
and  Chro- 


mosomes 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

With  the  rest,  there  is  often  or  always  an  odd 
one,  a  mysterious  personage  in  its  microscopic 
way,  whose  function  is  thought  by  some  to  be 
that  of  the  determiner  of  sex.  In  the  chro- 
matin  in  some  way  or  other  the  elements  of 
heredity  are  contained.  In  the  fertilized  egg, 
the  mixed  chromatin  of  the  two  cells  which 
have  been  fused  into  one  may  be  said  to  con- 
tain the  architect's  plan  by  which  the  com- 
ing animal  is  to  be  built  up.  The  same 
architect's  plan  exists  in  every  cell  within 
the  body.  In  the  mixed  chromatin  of  the 
cell  which  is  to  grow  and  to  divide,  to 
separate  and  integrate,  till  it  forms  Richard 
Roe,  the  potentialities  of  Richard  Roe  all 
lie  in  some  way  hidden.  How  this  is 
we  cannot  tell.  We  know  that  the  struc- 
ture of  a  single  cell  is  a  highly  complex  mat- 
ter, more  complex  than  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States,  with  a  far  more  perfect 
system  of  checks  and  balances.  When  we 
can  understand  all  that  takes  place  in  a  single 
cell  we  shall  "know  what  God  and  man  is." 
It  is  not,  like  the  Constitution  of  our  nation, 
a  simple  written  document  with  definite 

[12] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

powers  and  definite  limitations.  It  may 
rather  be  compared  to  the  unwritten  consti- 
tution of  civilization.  A  single  cell  may  hold 
in  potentiality  even  all  that  this  supposed 
constitution  may  embrace.  It  is  not  easy,  for 
example,  to  understand  how  the  possibilities 
of  Richard's  tone  of  voice,  or  the  color  of  his 
hair,  or  his  ear  for  music,  or  other  hereditary 
qualities  can  be  thus  hidden.  But  so  they 
seem  to  be  and  we  have  to  take  what  we  find. 
Science  does  not  stop  even  when  there  is  no 
thinkable  answer  to  her  problems. 

As  we  have  already  said,  when  Nature 
is  getting  the  germ  cells  ready,  the  hereditary 
material  or  chromatin  is  increased  in  each 
one  and  then  again  divided  and  sub-divided, 
till  in  the  ripened  cell  but  half  the  usual 
amount  is  present.  The  cell  is  then  ready 
to  unite  with  its  fellow  to  form  a  perfect  cell, 
from  which,  under  favorable  circumstances, 
the  great  alliance  of  cells  which  constitute  the 
body  of  Richard  Roe  can  be  built  up. 

Nature  makes  her  divisions  evenly 
enough,  but  never  quite  equally.  She  is  sat- 
isfied with  an  approximate  equality,  better 

[  is] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

satisfied  than  if  she  could  make  a  perfect 
division.  She  knows  no  straight  lines, 
she  never  made  a  perfect  sphere, 


Nature 
Divides 
Unequally 


and  she  takes  the  corner  away 
from  every  angle.  It  satisfies 
her  desire  for  likeness  to  have 
her  children  almost  alike  — 
never  quite.  Exact  likeness,  perfect  sym- 
metry would  exclude  variation,  for  which 
she  cares  still  more  than  for  likeness,  and 
for  good  reason.  If  her  creatures  grow  up 
unlike,  it  is  so  much  easier  for  her  to  find 
places  for  them  in  the  crowded  world  of  life. 
Moreover,  unlikeness  gives  play  for  se- 
lection. She  can  save  her  favorites  and  dis- 
card her  failures.  Whenever  she  divides  a 
cell,  she  splits  each  chromosome  from  end 
to  end.  Each  nucleus  keeps  its  bit  of  all 
that  was  in  the  old  nucleus. 

So  in  the  chromatin  of  his  two  parents 
Richard  Roe  finds  his  potentialities,  his  ca- 
pacities, and  his  limitations. 
But  latent  in  these  are  other 
capacities  and  other  limitations 
handed  down  from  other  generations  before 

[14] 


Atavism 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

them.  These  may  have  been  recessive  and 
never  guessed  at,  but  they  are  none  the  less 
real.  Each  grandfather  and  grandmother  has 
some  claim  on  Richard  Roe,  and  behind 
these,  dead  hands  from  older  graves  are  for- 
ever beckoning  in  his  direction.  The  past 
will  not  let  go,  but  with  each  generation  the 
dust  or  the  crust  grows  deeper  over  it. 
Moreover,  these  old  claims  grow  less  and  less 
with  time,  because  with  each  new  generation 
there  are  twice  as  many  competitors.  The 
recessives  have  twice  as  hard  a  struggle  to 
force  themselves  into  dominance.  Besides 
this,  as  we  shall  see  beyond,  these  past  gen- 
erations can  make  no  claim  on  him  except 
through  the  agency  of  his  own  parents. 
They  cannot  force  on  him  any  direct  inheri- 
tance. 

Out    of    these    elements    Mr.   Galton 
frames  the  idea  of  a  "mid-parent,"  a  sort  of 
centre  of  gravity    of    heredity, 


The  Mid- 
Parent 


which  in  language,  not  algebra, 
would  represent  the  same  set  of 
ideas.     But,  as  Dr.  Brooks  has 
observed,  "It  may  be  well  to  ask  what  evi- 

[15] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

dence  there  is  that  the  child  does  inherit  from 
any  ancestor  except  its  parents,  for  descent 
from  a  long  line  of  ancestors  is  not  neces- 
sarily equivalent  to  inheritance  from  them, 
and  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  conception  of 
a  'mid-parent'  may  be  nothing  but  a  logical 
abstraction."  The  parents  of  Richard  Roe 
were  his  father  and  mother,  not  his  grand- 
father or  grandmother,  nor  yet  the  whole 
human  race,  in  one  of  the  chains  of  which  he 
forms  a  single  link.  Recessive  qualities  are 
just  as  truly  inherited  as  dominant  ones. 
When  a  son  inherits  his  maternal  grandfath- 
er's beard  it  is  really  his  mother's  beard 
which  he  acquires.  It  is  the  beard  which  his 
mother  would  have  had  had  she  been  a  man. 
Dr.  Brooks  says:  "When  the  son  of  a 
beardless  boy  grows  up  and  acquires  a  beard, 
we  may  be  permitted  to  say  that  he  has  in- 
herited his  grandfather's  beard;  but  this  is 
only  a  figure  of  speech,  and  he  actually  in- 
herits the  beard  his  father  might  have  ac- 
quired had  he  lived;  nor  would  the  case  of  a 
child  descended  from  a  series  of  ten  or  a  hun- 
dred beardless  boys  be  any  different." 

[16] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

The  species  and  race  characters  being 
the  same  for  father  and  mother,  must  be  the 
same  for  the  son.  They  are  added  together 
and  divided  by  two.  Half  comes  from  each 
side  in  the  process  of  inheritance,  but  the  two 
halves  are  alike.  But  the  personal  peculiar- 
ities recognizable  in  the  father  are  different 
from  those  seen  in  the  mother.  The  son  can- 
not inherit  all  from  both  sources.  Certainly 
not  more  than  half  could  come  from  either 
source,  for  the  new  generation  could  not  be 
built  up  by  the  piling  on  of  peculiarities.  The 
old,  large,  common  heritage  must  always 
have  precedence.  Galton  has  made  a  calcu- 
lation, based  on  theory  and  confirmed  by 
wide  observations,  that  on  the  average 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  individual  pecu- 
liarities are  directly  inherited  from  each 
parent.  On  the  average,  each  parent  exerts 
the  same  force  of  heredity.  Half  the  char- 
acters come  from  each,  but  in  each  half  it 
would  appear  that  about  one-half  is  lost  or 
rendered  unrecognizable  by  other  variation 
or  by  contradictory  blendings.  The  first  di- 
vision of  qualities  in  half  is  necessary  and 


17 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

natural,  for  there  are  two  parents.  The 
second  division  in  half  is  an  arbitrary  assump- 
tion which  seems  to  find  its  warrant  in  Gal- 
ton's  studies.  We  might  assume  without 
theoretical  difficulty  a  third  or  a  fifth  as  being 
preserved  intact  among  possible  variations 
and  combinations.  One-half,  however,  seems 
nearer  the  fact,  and  to  find  the  fact  is  the 
only  purpose  of  theory.  To  the  characters 
received  from  the  parents  we  must  add  the 
latent  influence  of  grandparents,  great-grand- 
parents, and  the  long  array  of  dead  hands 
which,  however  impotent,  can  never  wholly 
let  go.  As  the  smallest  wave  must  go  on,  in 
theory  at  least,  till  it  crosses  the  ocean,  so 
the  influence  of  every  ancestor  must  go  on  to 
the  end  of  the  generation.  Each  of  us  must 
feel  in  a  degree  the  inborn  strength  or  weak- 
ness of  each  one  of  them.  The  strength  or 
weakness  each  has  gained  for  himself  he  must 
mostly  keep  for  himself.  In  this  regard  each 
child  is  freeborn,  the  founder  of  a  new 
dynasty.  To  each  grandparent,  Galton  as- 
signs six  and  two-thirds  per  cent.  There  are 
four  grandparents  and  two  stages  of  genera- 

[18] 


THE   HEREDITY   OF   RICHARD   ROE 

tion  separate  them  from  Richard  Roe.  Half 
the  force  of  each,  twice  lost,  seems  to  give  to 
each  grandparent  one-fourth  the  potency  in 
heredity  the  father  or  mother  has.  In  the 
same  way,  to  the  great-grandparent  we  must 
assign  the  relation  of  one  and  nine-sixteenth 
per  cent,  (one  sixty- fourth),  and  so  on. 

The  "bluer"    the    blood — that    is,    the 
more  closely  alike  these    ancestors  are — the 
greater  will  be  the  common  fac- 
tor,  the  less  the  amount  derived 


Thorough- 
Bred 


from  the  individual.  In  perfect 
thoroughbreedings  the  indi- 
vidual should  have  no  peculiarities  at  all. 
This  condition  is  never  reached,  but  it  may 
sometimes  be  approximated.  In  such  case 
the  addition  of  an  ancestral  sixteenth  or 
sixty-fourth  could  make  no  visible  change. 
This  may  be  true  among  the  very  bad  as  well 
as  among  the  very  good.  Weakness  or  bad- 
ness are  more  often  thoroughbred  than 
strength  or  virtue.  The  bluest  of  blood  may 
run  in  the  veins  of  the  pauper  as  well  as  in 
the  aristocrat  who  boasts  that  21474^3648  of 
his  ancestral  traits  came  from  William  the 

[193 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

Norman.  In  this  calculation  there  is  always 
a  bit  of  residuum  left,  in  which  each  ances- 
tor back  to  Pithecanthropus  erectus  of  Java, 
who  is  the  first  man  we  know  of,  can  find  his 
allotted  share.  And  for  Richard  Roe's  own 
sake,  let  us  hope  that  he  is  not  too  thorough- 
bred, that  he  has  no  record  running  back  too 
far  into  the  ages.  Too  narrow  a  line  of  de- 
scent tends  to  intensify  weaknesses.  Vigor 
and  originality  come  from  the  mingling  of 
variant  elements.  Nature  does  not  favor  "in- 
and-in  breeding."  There  is  no  loss  to  the 
individual  if  decided  and  different  qualities 
come  from  father  or  mother.  Contradictory 
or  even  incongruous  peculiarities  are  better 
than  no  peculiarities  at  all. 

We  may  imagine,  too,  that  ancestry, 
like  wine,  becomes  stale,  if  it  remains  too 
long  in  the  sunshine.  An  ancestry  which  is 
readily  traced  has  lived  too  much  in  easy 
places.  A  few  generations  of  successful  deal- 
ing with  small  matters  may  prepare  the  way 
for  the  power  to  deal  with  great  ones.  Wis- 
dom is  knowing  what  to  do  next,  and  wisdom 
may  exist  in  humble  as  well  as  conspicuous 
fields  of  action. 

[20] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

Again,  at  the  time    of    Richard    Roe's 
birth,  the  character  of  his  father  was  slowly 
changing     under     the     reaction 


Changes 
Through 
Experience 


toward  activity  or  to  idleness,  re- 
sulting from  his  efforts  and  his 
environment.  Whatever  it  was 
originally  and  potentially,  it  is  now  no 
longer  so.  Changes  constantly  arise  from 
the  experiences  of  life,  the  stress  of  en- 
vironment, the  reduction  of  "mental  fric- 
tion," the  formation  of  automatic  nervous 
connections  or  habits,  the  growth  through 
effort,  the  depression  from  involuntary  work 
or  voluntary  idleness,  the  decay  of  vice  or 
disease,  the  degeneration  through  the  vitia- 
tion of  nerve  honesty  caused  by  nerve  depres- 
sants or  nerve  irritants,  the  deterioration  due 
to  spurious  pleasures  that  burn  and  burn  out 
life  by  burning  its  candle  at  both  ends. 

Each  of  these  may  have  come  to  the 
father  of  Richard  Roe,  and  each  one  had  left 
its  mark  on  him.  The  fairy's  wand  and  the 
fool-killer's  club  each  leaves  an  indelible 
trace  wherever  it  is  used.  Through  these  in- 
fluences every  man  is  changed  from  what  he 


[21] 


THE        HEREDITY        OF        RICHARD        ROE 

was  or  what  he  might  have  been  to  what  he 
is.  What  part  of  this  passes  on  to  Richard 
Roe?  This  we  may  say,  that  whatever  de- 
tracts from  life  may  show  itself  in  the  next 
generation,  but  never  in  kind.  Drunkenness 
does  not  involve  inheritance  of  drunkenness. 
The  son  of  an  inebriate  may  not  inherit  in- 
ebriacy.  He  may,  however,  be  stricken  with 
epilepsy.  Drunkenness  for  the  most  part  is 
simply  a  result  of  weak  mindedness.  To  in- 
herit weak  mindedness  may  be  to  fall  back 
into  the  grasp  of  drunkenness  again.  Like 
conditions  produce  like  results  with  like  peo- 
ple. But  it  is  the  weakness,  not  the  drunken- 
ness, the  cause,  not  the  effect,  which  is 
inherited. 

The  results  of  the  changes  in  life,  the 
products  of  effort,  of  idleness,  of  environ- 
ment, of  nurture  are  known  as  Acquired 
Characters.  What  part  have  these  in 
Heredity  ? 

Lamarck's  "fourth  law"  of  develop- 
ment reads  as  follows:  "All  that  has  been 
acquired,  begun,  or  changed  in  the  structure 
of  the  individuals  in  their  lifetime  is  pre- 

[22] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD        ROE 

served  in  reproduction  and  transmitted  to 
the  new  individuals  which  spring  from  those 

,  ,  „  I  who  have  inherited  the  change." 
Inheritance  rT^1  .  .  ,  .  .  f  ^ 

of  Acquired  ThlS  1S  the  assumed  law  of  Pr°- 
Charaders  gressive  Heredity,  the  Inherit- 
'  ance  of  Acquired  Character. 

"Change  of  function  produces  change 
of  structure,"  so  Herbert  Spencer  tells  us; 
"it  is  a  tenable  hypothesis  that  changes  of 
structure  thus  produced  are  inheritable." 

But  though  this  may  be  a  tenable  hy- 
pothesis, the  opposite  hypothesis  is  thus  far 
much  more  tenable.  It  seems  to  be  true  that 
any  great  weakness  on  the  part  of  Richard 
Roe's  parents  would  tend  to  lower  his  con- 
stitutional vigor,  whatever  the  origin  of  such 
weakness  might  be.  If  so,  such  weakness 
might  appear  as  a  large  deficiency  in  his 
power  of  using  his  equipment.  It  may  be, 
too,  that  any  extreme  degree  of  training,  as 
in  music  or  mathematics,  might  determine  in 
the  offspring  the  line  of  least  resistance  for 
the  movement  of  his  faculties.  Perhaps  Rich- 
ard Roe  would  find  mathematics  easier  had 
his  father  devoted  his  life  to  exercise  of  that 


[23J 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

kind.  But  we  are  not  sure  that  this  is  so. 
All  observation  and  all  experiment  thus  far 
testify  against  it. 

I  cannot  pretend  to  say  what  will  be  the 
final  decision  of  science  in  regard  to  this 
vexed  question.  The  balance  of  scientific 
opinion  at  the  present  is  wholly  against  La- 
marck's hypothesis.  But  if  acquired  charac- 
ters are  absolutely  of  no  value  in  heredity, 
some  problems  in  biology  we  have  thought 
easy  become  tremendously  complicated.  We 
must  rewrite  a  large  portion  of  the  literature 
of  sociology.  We  must  rewrite  much  of 
Spencer's  Philosophy  as  well  as  that  of 
Haeckel.  We  must  give  a  new  diagnosis  to 
Ibsen's  Ghosts.  We  must,  in  fact,  do  this  in 
any  event,  for  inheritance  such  as  the  Nor- 
wegian dramatist  pictures  it  belongs  not  to 
heredity  at  all,  but  is  to  be  sought  for  among 
the  phenomena  of  transmission  and  nutrition. 
They  are  matters  of  vegetative  development 
rather  than  of  true  inheritance.  Of  the  same 
nature  is  probably  the  recurrence  of  "spent 
passions  and  vanished  sins"  that  certain  psy- 
chologists ascribe  to  heredity. 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

We  must,  I  think,  set  aside  the  inherit- 
ance of  acquired  characters  as    not    being  a 
visible    factor    in    the    lives    of 


Heredity 
Completes 


no 


Character 


the  higher  animals.  In  one 
sense,  nearly  all  the  characters 
of  the  adult  are  "acquired  char- 
acters" as  distinguished  from  innate  charac- 
ters. Heredity,  for  example,  does  not  give 
to  the  grown  man  his  characteristics.  It 
gives  only  the  power  to  acquire  them.  Just 
as  excessive  muscular  development  requires 
excessive  use  of  the  arm,  so  average  develop- 
ment of  any  organ  is  conditioned  on  an 
average  degree  of  normal  activity.  This  is 
a  matter  of  the  highest  importance  if  we  are 
to  understand  the  final  result  in  the  charac- 
ter and  ways  of  Richard  Roe.  The  color  of 
his  eyes  is  the  direct  gift  of  heredity,  for  he 
was  born  with  an  iris  and  no  effort  of  his 
and  no  neglect  could  change  its  color.  The 
leopard  cannot  change  his  spots.  But  the 
form  of  his  hands  was  not  fixed  once  for  all 
in  the  same  way.  That  depends  not  only  on 
heredity,  but  most  of  all  on  how  he  uses  these 
hands  in  after  life.  The  hand  of  least  em- 


[25] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

ployment  often  has  the  daintier  touch,  and 
this  touch  is  in  part  the  result  of  the  higher 
heredity  which  each  one  works  out  for  him- 
self. 

"Blood  will  tell,"  we  say  and  say  truly, 
but  it  is  not  always  clear  what  it  will  tell. 
We  often  mistake  the  bringing 
up    of    a    child    for    characters 


Will  Tell  "bred  in  the  bone."  The  kingly 
bearing  of  a  king,  still  more  the 
regal  bearing  of  a  queen  may  be  the  result 
of  habit,  not  at  all  of  any  innate  quality.  To 
be  called  a  king  from  childhood  on  makes  a 
boy  hold  up  his  head,  if  he  has  a  head  to 
hold.  To  be  despised  of  men  leads  the 
average  man  or  the  average  dog  to  the  habit 
of  dodging  and  skulking.  Women  above  all 
other  people  are  adaptable.  This  means  that 
they  lie  "at  the  feet  of  the  strong  god  Cir- 
cumstance." The  proud  and  haughty  among 
them  are  so  mainly  because  other  people  as- 
sign them  the  right  to  be  proud  and  haughty. 
Insofar  as  haughtiness,  exclusiveness  and  in- 
capacity for  effort  are  traits  of  the  conven- 
tional "lady,"  those  of  the  most  plebeian 


[26] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

stock  will  readily  qualify,  if  the  training  is 
begun  early.  Of  high  or  low  degree,  young 
women  soon  adjust  themselves  to  almost  any 
kind  of  elevation.  For  this  reason,  Napoleon 
insisted  that  women  should  have  no  rank,  no 
recognition  as  of  noble  blood,  because  they 
are  to  a  large  degree  the  creatures  of  envi- 
ronment. In  this  regard  men  are  much  like 
them.  For  the  same  reason,  then,  men  should 
likewise  be  debarred  from  hereditary  rank, 
for  inherited  standing  is  always  a  species  of 
farce.  It  is  said  that  the  Czar  of  Russia  has 
"the  brains  of  a  haberdasher's  clerk,"  a  role 
for  which  nature  has  doubtless  admirably 
fitted  him.  That  he  is  emperor  of  Russia 
may  give  him  other  manners,  but  it  does  not 
improve  his  brains.  Other  rulers,  as  his  late 
majesty  of  Belgium, 

"  One  whose  crown  shed  many  a  pearl 

When  his  beard  was  tweaked  by  a  dancing  girl  " 

might  have  filled  successfully  the  role  of  bar- 
tender or  barker  at  a  circus,  if  Fate  had  not 
ordered  otherwise.  There  are  other  kings 
who  would  seem  entirely  in  place  as  trolley 

[27] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

conductors  or  as  shipping  clerks,  or  might 
have  even  risen  to  the  rank  of  banker  or 
plumber.  It  was  the  boast  of  one  prince,  I 
have  forgotten  his  name,  that  he,  at  least, 
of  all  his  family  could  have  earned  his  living. 

Each  individual  man,  clown  or  king,  is 
the  son  or  daughter  of  what  his  father  or 
mother  ought  to  have  been.  His  characters 
are  drawn  from  his  parent's  possibilities,  not 
from  what  these  people  actually  were,  still 
less  from  what  they  appeared  to  be. 

Each  individual  inherits  a  part  of 
father's  and  mother's  powers,  not  as  finalities 
but  as  possibilities,  which  under  like  circum- 
stances may  arise  to  like  results.  Strictly 
speaking,  neither  father  nor  mother  gave 
Richard  Roe  anything  in  heredity.  Their 
part  is  passive.  He  is  a  chip  of  the  old 
block,  a  mingled  chip,  but  he  is  like  them 
mainly  because  he  is  actually  of  them.  The 
parents  give  not  what  they  are  at  the  time 
with  the  modifications  due  to  experience,  ma- 
turity and  old  age,  but  the  kind  of  substance 
of  which  they  are  themselves  made.  This  in- 
volves the  power  under  similar  circumstances 

[28] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

of  acquiring  these  modifications.  The  power 
to  develop  parts  harmoniously  at  all  stages 
of  growth  gives  to  the  higher  animals  their 
actual  existence.  Thus  stomach,  appetite, 
means  of  securing  food  and  the  will  to  do  it 
must  grow  and  develop  together,  else  the 
final  Richard  Roe  as  animal  or  man  would 
be  impossible. 

The  story  which  blood  must  tell  is  fur- 
ther complicated  by  the  fact  that  our  inherit- 
ance from  one  parent  is  largely 


What  negatived  by   the   other.      It   is 

said  that  the  tall  prefer  mates 
who  are  short.  The  solemn  and 
the  placid  alike  welcome  the  vivacious,  and 
the  blonde  mates  with  the  brunette.  Those 
characters  of  the  one  parent  not  reinforced 
by  the  other  drop  from  dominance  to  reces- 
sion. The  marriage  of  two  geniuses  gives  no 
guarantee  or  even  probability  of  genius,  un- 
less the  dominant  traits  of  father  and  mother 
are  wholly  alike  in  kind.  Under  our  social 
system,  or  any  other  workable  system,  this  is 
almost  never  the  case.  Hence  nature,  leading 
towards  averages,  seems  to  be  striving  for  me- 

[29] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

diocrity.  "Commonness  will  prevail,"  as  the 
botanist,  De  Candolle,  says  of  the  abundance 
of  grass.  On  the  other  hand,  unexpected 
glories  sometimes  arise  from  the  happy 
mating  of  these  common  folk  whose  charac- 
ters chance  to  supplement  each  other.  And 
by  the  same  token,  in  vigorous  nations  there 
are  not  many  really  common  folk.  Each  man 
has  some  distinction  of  his  own.  The  com- 
monest of  us  have  had  a  famous  lineage,  a 
brave  and  hardy  ancestry  if  we  only  knew  it, 
an  inheritance  of  vigor  and  persistence  else 
we  should  not  have  survived,  and  a  lineage 
as  long  as  the  longest  of  them  and  with  no 
doubt  an  equal  show  of  famous  names. 

Quality  is  more  likely  to  be  inherited 
than  quantity.  The  kind  of  mental  or  physi- 
cal quality  is  more  likely  to  appear  in  inherit- 
ance than  the  degree.  An  unusual  develop- 
ment of  any  trait  in  a  parent  is  likely  to  be 
offset  by  a  lack  of  it  on  the  part  of  the  other 
parent.  This  is  the  basis  of  the  law  of  Que- 
telet,  the  law  of  the  return  to  averages,  the 
law  by  which  average  parentage  being  the 
same  each  generation  will  produce  the  same 

[so] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

number  of  artists,  poets,  athletes,  cowards 
and  rascals.  But  this  phase  of  the  law  de- 
pends on  the  continuity  of  the  parental  type. 
If  certain  kinds  of  men  are  cut  off,  as  by  war, 
immigration  or  celibacy,  the  next  generation 
will  find  these  types  of  manhood  less  fully 
represented.  It  has  been  possible,  as  shown  in 
the  history  of  Greece  and  Rome,  and,  it  is 
said  of  Paraguay  also,  for  the  soldierly  type 
to  be  almost  completely  exterminated.  The 
man  who  is  left,  in  every  race,  determines  its 
future. 

One  of  the  perennial  questions  in  the 
study  of  man  is  that  of  the  relative  value  of 
the  original  endowment  as  com- 


Natureand  pared  with  the  acquisitions  of 
Nurture  environment,  training  and  ex- 

perience.         Mr.     Galton     has 

summed  up  these  problems  in  his  discussion 
of  "Nature  and  Nurture."  It  is  clear  that 
Nurture  has  only  Nature  to  build  upon.  She 
can  add  no  new  thing.  On  the  other  hand, 
Nature  is  wholly  dependent  on  Nurture  to 
secure  her  final  results.  With  adequate  nur- 
ture, each  man  becomes  what  it  is  in  him  to 


[31] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

become.  Each  man  creates  his  own  environ- 
ment having  been  first  created  by  it.  He  is 
"  the  captain  of  his  fate,  the  master  of  his  soul,'* 
but  has  to  take  what  is  due  him  as  a  result  of 
such  mastery.  There  are  not  many  of  us 
who  have  had  ideally  adequate  nurture.  We 
live  up  to  our  possibilities  only  in  part.  We 
are  soured  and  starved  and  dwarfed  by  our 
environment  or  else  through  luxury  we  have 
lost  the  stimulus  our  characters  demand.  It 
is  said  that  "woman  is  one-half  poet,  the  rest 
what  chance  of  man  and  marriage  may  hap- 
pen to  make  her."  It  is  much  the  same  with 
man.  The  line  between  success  and  failure  in 
human  life  is  often  a  very  narrow  one,  and 
one  which  is  traversed  unthinkingly.  It  is 
the  fine  art  of  conduct  not  to  make  the  same 
mistake  twice,  and  every  act  is  a  mistake  if  it 
leads  to  harm  to  ourselves  or  to  others. 

With  the  lower  animals  nature  is 
everything — nurture  a  minor  matter.  Inade- 
quate nurture  means  simply  destruction  of  the 
individual,  and  that  to  the  species  is  a  trifling 
^incident.  With  men  and  with  the  plants  and 
animals  which  man  has  made  to  depend  on 

[32] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

him,  and  man  is  himself  the  most  domesti- 
cated of  all  domestic  animals,  nurture  has  an 
ever-growing  importance.  All  our  schools, 
our  art,  science,  religion  have  their  justifica- 
tion as  part  of  our  nurture.  Still  at  the  end 
nurture  can  only  develop  what  was  there 
through  nature.  Education,  training  can 
make  nothing  new,  and  neither  can  leave  any 
traces  we  can  recognize  on  the  germs  of  life, 
which  show  their  development  in  generations 
to  come. 

The  character  of  a  nation  is  determined 
by  the  character  of  the  people  living  in  it. 
The  character  of  the  people  is  determined  by 
their  heredity,  the  kind  of  blood  that  runs  in 
their  veins.  Education  and  opportunity  en- 
able the  individual  to  realize  himself.  Strong 
people  demand  education  and  create  oppor- 
tunity. A  good  citizen  is  the  man  who  can 
take  care  of  himself  and  has  something  left 
over  for  the  common  welfare.  A  man  who 
has  no  training  and  who  demands  none  for 
his  children  is  not  a  good  citizen. 

The  purpose  of  the  study  of  Eugenics 
is  to  know  the  kind  of  ancestors  we  should 
pick  for  the  next  generation. 

[33] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

We  know  that  all  sorts  of  physical, 
mental  and  moral  defects  are  transmitted 
with  fatal  precision.  We  know  that  quality 
is  more  persistent  than  quantity,  general  ten- 
dencies more  persistent  than  special  greatness. 
We  know  that  "the  beaten  men  of  the  beaten 
races,"  being  exploitable,  increase  the  aggre- 
gate wealth  of  the  country  at  the  expense  of 
its  social  unity  and  of  its  civic  morals. 

We  know  that  a  nation  should  be 
judged  by  the  character  of  its  common  men 
and  the  degree  to  which  these  find  or  create 
opportunity.  It  is  not  judged  by  the  wealth 
of  its  bankers  or  its  captains  of  industry,  nor 
yet  by  its  art  or  its  science  insofar  as  these 
are  the  product  or  the  possession  of  the  few. 

Fitness  is  of  many  kinds,  and  all  kinds 
are  good.  All  of  us  have  streaks  of  unfitness 
and  it  is  for  no  man  to  judge  which  of  these 
outweighs  the  other.  But  we  know  what  it  is 
to  be  well-born,  and  to  be  well-born  should  be 
the  heredity  of  every  child  of  the  republic. 
If  this  generation  is  well-born,  the  next  will 
be  well  taught.  When  Nature  and  Nurture 
work  together,  we  are  well  on  our  way  to 

[34] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

ideal  conditions.  But  Nurture  will  do  noth- 
ing unless  Nature  is  first.  Nature  indicates 
possibilities.  It  is  for  Nurture  to  make  them 
good. 

Since  the  rise  of  the  term  Eugenics,  the 
contrasting    term     "Euthenics,"      (  evdijreia, 
prosperity)   has  found  its  place 


Eugenics 


in  literature.     Euthenics  is  the 


„    .  sum  total  of  well-being,  as  con- 

Luthenics  ,      .  ,     ,-,          .         , 

trasted  with  Eugenics,  the  sum 


total  of  being  well-born.  No  doubt  poverty, 
dirt  and  crime  are  bad  assets  in  one's  early 
environment.  No  doubt  these  elements  cause 
the  ruin  of  thousands  who,  by  heredity,  were 
good  material  of  civilization.  But  again, 
poverty,  dirt,  and  crime  are  the  products  of 
those,  in  general,  who  are  not  good  material. 
It  is  not  the  strength  of  the  strong,  but  the 
weakness  of  the  weak  which  engenders  ex- 
ploitation and  tyranny.  The  slums  are  at 
once  symptom,  effect  and  cause  of  evil. 
Every  vice  stands  in  this  same  threefold  rela- 
tion. 

To  eradicate  the  symptoms  of  vice  is 
not  to  bring  about  virtue,  though  it  may  be 


[35 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

a  help.  We  would  not  in  the  least  discourage 
the  practice  of  Euthenics  in  any  of  its  multi- 
farious benevolent  forms.  We  would  only 
insist  on  the  fundamental  fact  that  good  stock 
is  not  the  product  of  good  surroundings  alone. 
Good  stock*  is  the  necessary  and,  in  a  large 
way,  invariable  product  of  good  ancestry.  A 
good  stock  is  the  only  material  out  of  which 
history  can  make  a  great  nation. 

Somewhere  in  the  good  world,  Richard 
Roe  was  born,  and  his  friends  would  speak  of 
him  as  a  son  or  child  of  that  par- 


Influence 


ticular  place.     But    this    is  not 


o.  Jt  i  fair  to  Richard    Roe,    nor  is  it 

Birthplace         ,  .  ,  .    ,.    ,  '  „ 

fair  even  to  his  birthplace.     For 


if  Richard  Roe  were  an  honor  to  North  Co- 
hasset  or  Eau  Claire,  let  us  say,  the  same 
town  was  the  birthplace  of  many  who  gave  it 
no  honor.  Cohasset  was  responsible  for 
neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  Richard  Roe 
was  descended,  not  from  the  town,  but  from 
those  who  were  his  actual  parents  and  ances- 

*  "  Es  schadet  Nichts  in  einem  Entenhof  geboren  zu 
sein  wenn  man  in  einem  Sch wanenei  gelegen  ist." 

Hans  Christian  Andersen, 

(No  harm  to  be  born  in  a  duck-yard  if  one  has  been 
laid  in  a  swan-egg.) 

[36J 


THE        HEREDITY       OF        RICHARD        ROE 

tors.  Cohasset  was  not  made  up  of  these. 
Among  the  great  men  of  the  last  century, 
Goethe  was  not  typical  of  Frank  fort-on-the- 
Main,  nor  Lincoln  of  Harden  County,  Ken- 
tucky, Darwin  was  not  a  son  of  Shrewsbury, 
nor  Bessemer  of  Charlton.  If  Emerson  typi- 
fied Boston,  it  was  to  some  degree  the  Boston 
of  which  Emerson  was  a  creator.  In  train- 
ing and  nurture,  no  doubt,  each  man  was  in- 
fluenced by  the  ways  of  his  early  environ- 
ment, but  from  this  environment  no  part  of 
their  greatness  has  arisen.  Nathan  Roth- 
schild, mightiest  of  financiers,  in  whose  grasp 
is  still  the  militant  Europe  of  today,  was  like- 
wise born  in  Frankfort-on-the-Main,  not  far 
away  in  time  or  space  from  the  birthplace  of 
Goethe.  While  Napoleon  was  a  Corsican, 
no  other  son  of  Corsica  is  likely  ever  to  turn 
the  world  upside  down  in  pursuit  of  personal 
ambition.  Bismarck  was  born  at  Schonhau- 
sen,  in  Prussia,  but  we  do  not  look  to  Schon- 
hausen  for  another  iron  hand  to  grip  the 
coming  century  with  the  clutch  of  material- 
ism. Bismarck  was  the  product  of  an  iron 
lineage,  not  of  the  community  in  which  his 

[sr] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD        ROE 

parents  lived.  Richard  Roe  came  over  from 
England  with  his  ancestry.  His  birthplace 
was  but  a  temporary  camping  ground,  shared 
with  those  of  a  thousand  other  lines  of 
descent. 

In  the  heredity  of  Richard  Roe,  besides 
all  the  intricacies  of  Nature  and  Nurture,  of 
Eugenics     and     Euthenics,     we 


Prenatal 
Influences 


must  consider  one  more  factor, 
which,  if  it  exists,  belongs  to 
Nurture  and  to  Euthenics.  This 
is  the  so-called  prenatal  influence  of  the 
mother. 

In  the  process  of  evolution  the  develop- 
ment of  the  female  has  brought  her  to  be 
more  and  more  the  protector  and  helper  of 
the  young.  She  gives  to  her  progeny  not 
only  her  share  of  its  heredity,  but  she  becomes 
more  and  more  a  factor  in  its  development. 

In  the  mammalia  the  little  egg  is  re- 
tained long  in  the  body  and  fed,  not  with 
food  yolk,  but  with  the  mother's  blood.  The 
"gate  of  gifts"  is  not  absolutely  closed  with 
the  process  of  conception  in  the  same  sense 
as  is  the  case  with  the  lower  forms.  If  the 


[38] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

help  of  favorable  environment  can  be  counted 
as  a  gift,  this  gate  is  not  closed  at  birth  nor 
so  long  as  the  influence  of  the  mother  re- 
mains. By  the  growth  of  the  human  family 
the  parental  environment  becomes  a  lifelong 
influence.  The  father  as  well  as  the  mother 
becomes  a  part  of  it.  In  Walt  Whitman's 
words:  / 

"  His  own  parents  (he  that  had   fathered  him  and  she 
that  had  conceived  him  in  her  womb  and  birth' d  him) , 
They  gave  this  child  more  of  themselves  than  that, 
They  gave  afterward  every  day,  they  became  part  of  him." 

It  has  long  been  a  matter  of  common 
belief  that  among  mammals  a  special  forma- 
tive influence  is  exerted  by  the  mother  in  the 
period  between  conception  and  birth.  The 
youthful  Jacob  is  reputed  to  have  made  a 
thrifty  use  of  this  influence  in  dealing  with 
the  herds  of  his  father-in-law,  Laban.  This 
belief  is  part  of  the  folklore  of  almost  every 
race  of  intelligent  men.  In  the  translations 
of  Carmen  Silva,  that  gentle  woman  whom 
kind  Nature  made  a  poet  and  more  or  less 
cruel  fortune  a  queen,  we  find  these  words  of 
a  Roumanian  peasant  woman : 

[39] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

"  My  little  child  is  lying  in  the  grass, 
His  face  is  covered  with  the  blades  of  grass. 
While  I  did  bear  the  child,  I  ever  watched 
The  reaper  work,  that  it  might  love  the  harvests  ; 
And  when  the  boy  was  born,  the  meadow  said, 
'This  is  my  child.'  " 

In  the  current  literature  of  hysterical 
ethics  we  find  all  sorts  of  exhortations  to 
mothers  to  do  this  and  not  to  do  that,  to 
cherish  this  and  avoid  that  on  account  of  its 
supposed  effect  on  the  coming  progeny.  Long 
lists  of  cases  have  been  reported  illustrating 
the  law  of  prenatal  influences.  Most  of  these 
records  are  obviously  without  value.  Some 
of  them  are  mere  coincidences,  some  are  un- 
verifiable,  some  grossly  impossible,  and  some 
read  like  the  certificates  of  patent  medicines. 
There  is  an  evident  desire  to  make  a  case 
rather  than  to  tell  the  truth.  The  whole  mat- 
ter is  much  in  need  of  serious  study,  and  the 
entire  record  of  alleged  facts  must  be  set 
aside  to  make  an  honest  beginning. 

Dr.  Weismann  ridicules  these  records 
and  believes  that  all  forms  of  mother's 
marks,  prenatal  influences,  and  the  like,  are 

[40] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

relics  of  mediaeval  superstition.  Other  high 
authorities  believe  that  these  supposed  influ- 
ences exist  and  are  occasionally  made  evident. 
Doubtless  most  of  the  current  stories  are 
products  of  self-deception  or  plain  lying. 
For  example,  Dr.  Fearn  cites  the  following 
case:  "A  mother  witnessed  the  removal  of 
one  of  the  bones  (metacarpal)  from  her  hus- 
band's hand,  an  operation  which  greatly 
shocked  and  alarmed  her.  A  short  time  after, 
her  child  was  born  without  the  corresponding 
bone,  which  was  removed  from  the  father." 
If  this  report  is  true,  our  ideas  of  the 
formation  and  dissolution  of  parts  of  the 
skeleton  must  be  materially  changed.  We 
must  believe  either  that  the  metacarpal  bones 
are  formed  just  before  birth,  after  all  the  rest 
of  the  skeleton,  or  else  that  bones  once  formed 
may  be  reabsorbed  under  the  influence  of 
nervous  shock  or  hysteria.  Either  view  is,  of 
course,  absurd.  Probably  the  period  of  ges- 
tation is  too  short  for  peculiar  nervous  states 
to  produce  far-reaching  changes  in  hereditary 
endowments.  On  the  other  hand,  doubt  and 
ridicule  are  not  argument,  and  there  may  be 

[41] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

some  reality  in  influences  in  which  the  world 
has  so  long  believed;  but  these  phenomena,  if 
existing,  belong  to  the  realm  of  abnormal 
nerve  action  or  of  altered  nutrition,  not  to 
heredity. 

There  are,  again,  many  phenomena  of 
transmitted  qualities  that  cannot  be  charged 


Trans- 
mission of 
Impaired 
Vitality 


to  heredity.  Just  as  a  sound 
mind  demands  a  sound  body,  so 
does  a  sound  child  demand  a 

sound    mother.     Bad    nutrition 

before  as  well  as  after  birth  may  neutralize 
the  most  vigorous  inheritance  within  the 
germ  cell.  A  child  well  conceived  with  the 
best  of  Eugenics  may  yet  be  stunted  in  de- 
velopment. The  many  physical  vicissitudes 
between  conception  and  birth  may  determine 
the  rate  of  early  growth  or  the  impetus  of 
early  development  Perfect  development 
demands  the  highest  nutrition  or  absolute 
~~  ~  I  Euthenics,  an  ideal  never 
p.  reached.  In  such  fashion  the 

child  may  bear  the  incubus  of 


Ibsen's  "Ghosts"   for  which  it  had  no  per- 
sonal responsibility.      "Spent    passions    and 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

vanished  sins"  may  impair  germ  cells,  male 
or  female,  as  they  injure  the  organs  that 
produce  them. 

Dr.  Woods  Hutchinson  pertinently  ob- 
serves: "Complex  and  wondrous  and  con- 
ceited as  we  are,  we  are  little  but  carriers  of 
the  germ  plasms,  lanterns  to  protect  from 
the  gusts  of  circumstances  the  torch  of  the 
life  of  the  race  within  us.  Almost  the  only 
way  we  possibly  can  affect  the  next  genera- 
tion is  either  to  starve  or  to  poison,  by  the 
toxin  of  infectious  disease  or  by  the  external 
poisons  like  alcohol  or  lead,  the  blood  which 
nourishes  the  germ  cells  within  our  bodies. 

"The  only  hereditary  diseases  are  epi- 
lepsy and  certain  insanities,  sick  headache  and 
possibly  alcoholism.  These  are  really  un- 
balanced or  defective  states  of  nerve  organi- 
zation which  might  be  trained  to  normal 
vigor  or  resistance." 

We  know  in  these  days  something  of 
the  methods  of  heredity,  "laws"  we  call  them, 
but  a  law  in  nature  is  simply  the  co-ordinated 
record  of  our  experience.  In  Darwin's 
words,  a  law  is  "  the  observed  sequence 

[43] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

of  events,"  the  way  things  turn  out,  as  we 
men  look  at  them  or  try  on  them  our  experi- 
ments. In  these  later  years 


Laws  of 
Nature 


we  have  found  that  the  laws  and 
methods  of  heredity  are  essen- 
tially the  same  throughout  the 
organic  life  of  the  globe.  Man  is  no  excep- 
tion, and  in  all  regards  he  takes  his  chance 
with  the  rest.  In  all  respects,  the  laws  of 
breeding  of  the  higher  animals  and  of  man 
run  exactly  alike.  Whatever  is  true  of  the  one 
in  heredity  is  true  of  the  others,  and  of  the 
lower  animals  and  of  "  our  brother  organ- 
isms," the  plants,  each  in  his  degree.  "  Like 
the  seed  is  the  harvest."  And  this  is  the 
second  law,  like — but  never  quite  the  same. 
Nature  never  repeats  herself — never  quite 
but  ever  almost.  And  that  she  may  never 
quite  repeat  herself,  each  organism  among 
the  higher  forms  represents  a  double  strain, 
halved  and  then  doubled — the  line  derived 
from  each  of  the  two  parents.  The  function 
of  sex  in  nature  is  primarily  to  insure  varia- 
tion. From  variation,  with  the  survival  of 
the  forms  best  fitted,  springs  progress, 


[44] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

whether  of  man  or  of  the  lower  animals. 
From  this  demand  for  variation,  in  some 
fashion  impressed  on  the  primitive  life  of  the 
world,  arise  the  forces  that  hold  humanity 
together. 

Out  from  the  ruthless  ages 

Rises,  like  incense  mild, 
The  love  of  the  man  and  the  woman, 

The  love  of  mother  and  child. 

The  assignment  of  characters  of  the 
parent  to  the  young  is  not  altogether  in  hap- 
hazard fashion,  but  in  many  cases,  at  least, 
it  shows  a  touch  of  that  mathematics  which 
is  the  foundation  of  inorganic  nature,  but 
which  is  rarely  traceable  in  the  world  of  life. 
In  organic  nature,  a  straight  line,  a  right 
angle,  a  perfect  curve  or  an  involved  number 
is  an  element  which  very  seldom  appears. 
Quadrupeds  have  four  limbs  and  insects  six, 
while  some  flowers  have  their  parts  in  threes, 
fours  or  fives.  The  leaves  on  the  trees  have 
each  a  cycle  or  part  of  the  circumference 
ranging  between  one-half  to  one-third,  with 
a  preference  for  two-fifths  or  three-eighths, 
but  this  does  not  take  us  far  into  the  abstru- 

[45] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

sities  of   mathematics.     Heredity    sometimes 
goes  a  little  further. 

It  happened  in  the  early  sixties  of  the 
last  century,  in  the  city  of  Brunn,  the  capital 

7"!  TT  I  of  the  Austrian  province  of  Mo- 
Mendelism  .  A  .  , 
1  ravia,  an  Augustine  monk  ex- 
perimented in  his  cloister  garden  on  the  rear- 
ing of  peas.  His  name  was  Gregor  Johann 
Mendel,  and  the  discoveries  he  made  are  now 
known  as  Mendelism,  and  those  plants  and 
animals  in  which  these  discoveries  can  be 
traced  are  said  to  show  Mendelian  inherit- 
ance. 

The  facts  of  Mendelian  inheritance 
carry  our  knowledge  farther  than  the  simple 
proportions  laid  down  by  Galton  as  averages 
of  ancestral  inheritance,  the  fractions  2/4+ 
4/16+8/64+16/256,  the  sum  of  these  for- 
ever approaching,  but  never  quite  reaching 
unity.  Apparently  not  inconsistent  with 
these,  though  not  traceable  in  all  cases,  run 
the  numerical  averages  of  Mendel's  peas,  and 
similar  averages  are  traceable  in  the  breeding 
of  guinea-pigs,  rabbits,  chickens,  silk  worms, 
and  at  times  in  the  breeding  of  man. 

[46] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

The  following  summary    of    Mendel's 
methods  and  results  is  condensed  from  an  ac- 
count given  by  Professor  Bate- 


Bateson  on 
Mendelism 


son.     For  the  purposes  of  his  ex- 
periments  on  the  pea,   Mendel 
selected  seven  pairs  of  characters 
as  follows: 

1.  Shape  of  ripe  seed,  whether  round 
or  angular  and  wrinkled. 

2.  Color  of  the  seed   leaves,  whether 
yellow  or  green. 

3.  Color  of  the    seed    skin,    whether 
gray-brown  or  white. 

4.  Shape  of  seed  pod,  whether  simply 
inflated   or   deeply   constricted   between   the 
seeds. 

5.  Color  of  unripe  pod,  whether  green 
or  bright  yellow. 

6.  Nature  of    flowering,    whether  the 
flowers  are  arranged  along  the  axis  of  the 
plant  or  at  its  tip,  forming  umbrella-fashion. 

7.  Length    of    stem,    whether    long, 
(about  six  feet)  or  short  (about  a  foot). 

Mendel    made    many     experiments     in 
crossing  peas  which  would  differ  from  each 

[47] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

other  in  some  one  of  each  of  these  pairs  of 
characters.  It  was  found  that  in  every  case 
the  offspring  of  the  cross  exhibited  the  char- 
acter of  one  of  the  parents  in  almost  undimin- 
ished  intensity.  Intermediate  forms  not  evi- 
dently leaning  toward  one  parent  or  another 
were  not  found.  These  traits  are  thus  held 
to  be  unit  characters,  or  characters  inherited 
as  a  whole  without  division  or  blending.  In 
each  pair  of  contrasted  characters  one  pre- 
vails over  another  in  each  individual  of 
the  progeny.  The  trait  which  thus  prevails 
Mendel  calls  the  dominant  character,  the 
other  being  the  recessive  character. 

In  all  cross-breeding,  the  existence  of 
such  "dominant"  (or  "prepotent")  and  "re- 
cessive" (or  "latent")  characters  has  been 
recognized  as  a  common  phenomenon.  The 
inheritance  of  recessive  characters  explains 
why  an  individual  may  "take  after"  a  grand- 
parent rather  than  a  direct  parent. 

By  letting  the  cross-bred  peas  fertilize 
themselves  Mendel  next  reared  another  gen- 
eration. In  this  generation  were  individuals 
which  showed  the  dominant  character,  but 

[48] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

also  individuals  which  presented  the  recessive 
character.  This  fact  had  been  frequently 
noticed  before.  But  Mendel  discovered  that 
in  this  generation  the  numerical  proportion 
of  dominants  to  recessives  is  almost  constant, 
being  as  three  to  one.  With  considerable 
regularity  these  numbers  were  found  in  the 
case  of  each  of  his  pairs  of  characters.  There 
are  thus  in  the  first  generation  raised  from 
the  cross-breds  seventy-five  per  cent,  domi- 
nants and  twenty-five  per  cent,  recessives. 

These  plants  were  again  self-fertilized, 
and  the  offspring  of  each  plant  separately 
sown.  It  next  appeared  that  the  offspring  of 
the  recessive  remained  pure  recessive,  and  in 
subsequent  generations  never  produced  the 
dominant  again. 

But  when  the  seeds  obtained  by  self- 
fertilizing  the  dominants  were  examined  and 
sown  it  was  found  that  the  dominants  were 
not  all  alike,  but  consisted  of  two  classes: 
( i )  those  which  gave  rise  to  pure  dominants, 
and  ( 2 )  others  which  gave  a  mixed  offspring, 
composed  partly  of  recessives,  partly  of  domi- 
nants. Here  also  it  was  found  that  the 

[49] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

average  numerical  proportions  were  constant, 
those  with  pure  dominant  offspring  being  to 
those  with  mixed  offspring  as  one  to  two. 
Here  it  is  seen  that  the  seventy-five  per  cent, 
dominants  are  not  really  of  similar  constitu- 
tion, but  consist  of  twenty-five  which  are  pure 
dominants  and  fifty  which  are  really  cross- 
breds,  though,  like  the  cross-breds  raised  by 
crossing  the  two  original  varieties,  they  only 
exhibit  the  dominant  character. 

To  resume,  then,  it  was  found  that  by 
self-fertilizing  the  original  cross-breds  the 
same  proportion  was  always  approached, 
namely : 

25  dominants,  50  cross-breds,  25  reces- 
sives. 

Like  the  pure  recessives,  the  pure  domi- 
nants are  thenceforth  pure,  and  only  give 
rise  to  dominants  in  all  succeeding  genera- 
tions studied.  On  the  contrary,  the  fifty 
cross-breds,  as  stated  above,  have  mixed  off- 
spring. But  these  offspring,  again,  in  their 
numerical  proportions,  follow  the  same  law, 
namely,  that  there  are  three  dominants  to 
one  recessive.  The  recessives  are  pure  like 

[so] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

those  of  the  last  generation,  but  the  domi- 
nants can,  by  further  self-fertilization,  and 
examination  or  cultivation  of  the  seeds  pro- 
duced, be  again  shown  to  be  made  up  of  pure 
dominants  and  cross-breds  in  the  same  pro- 
portion of  one  dominant  to  two  cross-breds. 
The  process  of  breaking  up  into  the  parent 
forms  is  thus  continued  in  each  successive 
generation,  the  same  numerical  law  being  fol- 
lowed so  far  as  has  yet  been  observed. 

Mendel  made  further  experiments  with 
the  common  pea,  crossing  pairs  of  varieties 
which  differed  from  each  other  in  two  char- 
acters, and  the  results,  though  necessarily 
much  more  complex,  showed  that  the  law  ex- 
hibited in  the  simpler  case  of  pairs  differing 
in  respect  of  one  character  operated  here  also. 

In  crossing  plants  differing  in  many 
different  ways,  and  in  crossing  animals,  we 
find  traces  of  the  same  general  rules.  But 
very  often,  as  in  the  hybrid  walnuts,  the 
number  of  possible  elements  of  variation  or 
unit  characters  is  so  very  great,  that  we  can 
no  longer  with  certainty  trace  the  Mendelian 
distinctions.  In  man,  the  most  complex  of 

[51] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

all  organisms,  we  find  all  degrees  of  apparent 
mosaic  or  blend.  Nevertheless,  in  so  far  as 
we  are  able  to  isolate  a  single  element  or  unit 
character,  we  find  more  or  less  evidence  of 
the  existence  of  numerical  relations,  similar 
to  those  shown  in  the  crosses  of  the  pea. 
Moreover,  it  is  clear  that  in  every  individual, 
dominant  and  recessive  characters  are  found, 
the  dominant  traits  evident  in  the  individual, 
but  perhaps  not  to  appear  in  the  offspring, 
the  recessives  not  traceable  in  the  individual 
but  recurring,  without  abatement,  in  the  he- 
redity of  his  descendants. 

The  striking  feature  of  Mendel's  work 
is  the  fact  that  he  has  been  able  to  give  some 
degree  of  explanation  why  characters  are 
dominant  or  recessive  and  to  suggest  reason 
for  the  uniform  ratio  in  which,  in  simple  con- 
ditions, we  may  expect  each  to  appear.  This 
explanation  is  involved  in  the  idea  of  "purity 
of  the  germ-cells."  The  units  of  heredity  are 
mingled  in  the  process  of  fertilization  or 
"amphimixis,"  but  they  do  not,  any  of  them, 
lose  in  this  process  any  degree  of  their  own 
individuality. 

[52] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

In  the  result  of  a  cross-mating,  the 
young  may  show  but  one  of  a  contrasting  pair 
of  parental  characters.  This  is  the  dominant 
or  apparent  character.  Yet  when  these  young 
develop  their  own  germ-cells,  both  these  pa- 
rental characters  will  be  represented,  not 
however  in  every  cell,  but  one  of  them  in  any 
one  germ  cell.  In  the  case  of  Mendel's  peas, 
the  pollen  cells  and  the  ovule  cells  would 
carry  one  or  the  other  type  but  not  both.  If 
this  is  so,  and  if  the  cells  be  evenly  divided  as 
to  these  characters,  then  by  random  mating 
(according  to  the  law  of  probabilities)  we 
should  have  just  such  results  as  the  experi- 
ments of  Mendel  actually  show.  Similar  rec- 
ords have  been  shown  by  experiments  with 
many  other  plants  and  animals. 

Thus,  says  Professor  Vernon  L.  /Kel- 
logg, "the  so-called  Mendelian  laws  of  hered- 
ity refer  to  two  phases  of  the 


Kellogg  on      problem  of  inheritance,  namely : 
Mendelum        (i)     how    inherited    characters 

'     are  actually  distributed,  and  (2) 

the  fundamental  cause,    lying    in    the    germ 
plasm,  for  this  particular  kind  of  distribu- 


THE       HEREDITY       OF        RICHARD        ROE 

tion.  Like  Galton's  formula,  Mendel's  law 
expresses  the  regularity  of  heredity  based  on 
actual  recorded  statistics  of  inheritance;  but 
it  also  gives  a  satisfying  fundamental  reason 
for  this  regularity.  Biologists,  with  few  ex- 
ceptions, see  in  the  establishment  of  the  Men- 
delian  principles  of  heredity  in  biologic  sci- 
ence the  greatest  advance  toward  a  rational 
explanation  of  inheritance  that  has  been 
made  since  the  beginning  of  the  scientific 
study  of  the  problem." 

Dr.  Charles  B.  Davenport,  in  his  book- 
let on  "Eugenics,"  thus  emphasizes  the  prac- 
tical value  of  these  discoveries 


Davenport 


on 


Mendelian 


of  Mendel:  "Three  fundamen- 


tal   principles    are    to  be  kept 

Inheritance         11-           •    j        / 1  \    ^.L 

clearly  in   mind:     (1)  the  prin- 


ciple of  independent  unit  characters,  (2)  the 
principle  of  the  determiner  in  the  germ 
plasm,  and  (3)  the  principle  of  segregation 
of  determiners. 

"The  principle  of  independent  unit 
characters  states  that  the  qualities  or  charac- 
teristics of  organisms  are,  or  may  be  analyzed 
into,  distinct  units  that  are  inherited  inde- 

[54] 


THE   HEREDITY   OF   RICHARD   ROE 

pendently.  It  follows  that  the  characters  of 
a  parent  or  a  particular  relative  are  not  in- 
herited as  a  whole,  but  each  individual  is  a 
mosaic  of  characters  that  appear  in  a  variety 
of  relations. 

"The  principle  of  the  determiner  in  the 
germ  plasm  states  that  each  unit  character  is 
represented  in  the  germ  by  a  molecule  or  as- 
sociated groups  of  molecules  called  a  deter- 
miner. These  determiners  are  transmitted  in 
the  germ  plasm  and  are  the  only  things  that 
are  truly  inherited.  It  is  a  corollary  of  the 
theory  of  inheritance  from  the  determiner 
that  we  do  not  inherit  from  our  parents, 
grandparents  or  collaterals,  but  related  indi- 
viduals have  some  common  characteristics  be- 
cause developed  out  of  the  same  germ  plasm 
with  the  same  determiners.  A  child  resem- 
bles his  father  because  he  and  his  father  are 
developed  from  the  same  stuff.  Both  are 
chips  from  the  same  old  block.  In  relation 
to  determiners  some  characteristics  are  posi- 
tive, depending  directly  upon  them;  while 
others  are  negative  and  depend  upon  the  ab- 
sence of  a  determiner.  Thus  a  brown  eye  de- 

[55] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

pends  on  an  enzyme  that  produces  the  sepia 
colored  pigment,  while  a  blue  eye  depends 
upon  the  absence  of  such  an  enzyme.  It  is 
not  always  easy  to  anticipate  whether  a  given 
characteristic  is  positive  or  negative.  For 
instance,  long  hair  as  in  angora  cats,  sheep  or 
guinea  pigs  is  apparently  not  due  to  a  factor 
added  to  short  hair,  but  rather  to  the  absence 
of  a  determiner  that  stops  growth  in  short- 
haired  animals. 

"The  principle  of  segregation  of  de- 
terminers in  the  germ  plasm  states  that  char- 
acteristics do  not  blend.  That  if  one  parent 
has  a  characteristic  while  the  other  lacks  it, 
then  the  offspring  get  a  determiner  from  one 
side  only  instead  of  from  both  sides.  When 
the  germ  cells  are  formed  in  such  offspring 
half  of  them  have  the  determiner  and  half  of 
them  lack  it.  There  is  thus  a  segregation  of 
presence  and  of  absence  of  the  determiner  in 
the  germ  cells  of  the  mixed  offspring.  The 
characteristic  in  the  offspring  that  is  due  to 
a  single  (instead  of  the  normal  double)  de- 
terminer is  called  a  simplex  characteristic. 
Such  a  characteristic  is  frequently  distinguish- 

[56] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

able  from  one  that  is  due  to  the  double  de- 
terminer by  its  imperfect  development.  Thus 
the  offspring  of  a  pure  black-eyed  and  a  blue- 
eyed  parent  will  have  brown  eyes. 

It  is  a  corollary  of  the  foregoing  that  if 
the  individual  with  a  simplex  character  be 
mated  to  one  lacking  this  character,  half  of 
the  offspring  will  lack  the  determiner  and 
half  will  be  simplex,  again,  in  respect  to  the 
character.  If  in  both  parents  the  character 
be  simplex,  then  two  like  determiners  will 
meet  in  one-fourth  of  the  unions  of  egg  and 
sperm,  the  two  will  both  be  absent  in  one- 
fourth  of  the  unions, — such  will  be  simplex 
again.  If  one  parent  have  the  characteristic 
simplex  and  the  other  duplex,  then  half  of  the 
offspring  will  have  it  simplex  and  half  du- 
plex. 

Starting  with  the  principles  just  enunci- 
ated we  reach  at  once  the  most  important 
generalization  of  the  modern  science  of  her- 
edity:— When  a  determiner  of  a  characteris- 
tic is  absent  from  the  germ  plasm  of  both 
parents  (as  proved  by  its  absence  from  their 
bodies}  it  will  be  absent  in  all  of  their  off- 

[57] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

spring.  In  order  to  predict  the  result  of  a 
particular  mating  it  is  necessary  first  to  know 
what  similar  unit  characteristics  both  the  pa- 
rents lack,  what  they  both  possess  and  in 
which  characters  they  differ,  and,  secondly,  to 
know  for  each  characteristic  whether  it  is  due 
to  the  presence  of  a  determiner  or  to  its  ab- 
sence. This  can,  in  part,  be  determined  ex- 
perimentally or  it  may  be  inferred  from  pedi- 
grees. Nevertheless  our  knowledge  of  de- 
terminers progresses  slowly;  for  here,  as  in 
other  branches  of  science,  nature's  secrets 
have  to  be  forced  from  her. 

"To  illustrate  the  precision  with  which 
the  characteristics  of  offspring  may  be  pre- 
dicted in  the  best  studied  cases,  I  may  refer 
to  eye  color.  Blue  eyes  are  due  to  the  ab- 
sence of  brown  pigment.  If  there  is  a  de- 
terminer for  brown  iris  pigment  in  the  germ 
plasm  it  will  produce  such  pigment  in  the 
body  that  arises  from  that  germ  plasm.  The 
absence  of  iris  pigment  is  proof  of  the  ab- 
sence of  the  pigment  determiner  from  the 
germ  plasm.  If  both  parents  lack  brown  pig- 
ment, their  offspring,  being  devoid  of  the  de- 


58 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

terminer  for  brown  pigment,  will  all  lack 
brown  pigment.  As  a  matter  of  experience 
two  parents  both  with  pure  blue  eyes  will 
have  only  blue-eyed  offspring.  Similarly,  if 
the  hair  of  the  parents  be  flaxen,  that  is  evi- 
dence of  the  absence  of  a  hair-pigment  deter- 
miner in  their  germ  plasm.  In  the  united 
germ  plasms  of  two  flaxen-haired  parents 
there  is  no  determiner  for  hair  pigment,  and 
all  children  will  have  flaxen  hair.  This 
agrees,  again,  with  experience.  For  the  same 
reason  parents  both  lacking  curliness  or  wavi- 
ness  of  hair  will  typically  have  only  straight 
haired  children. 

"Hair  and  eye  color  are  characteristics 
which  serve  well  to  illustrate  the  precision  of 
the  modern  science  of  heredity,  but  they  are 
ordinarily  considered  to  be  immaterial  to 
well-being.  But  if  it  is  true,  as  Major  C.  E. 
Woodruff  maintains,  that  pigmentation  pro- 
tects individuals  from  the  injurious  effects  of 
the  tropical  sun's  rays,  then  one  may  say  that 
the  marriage  of  two  blue-eyed  persons  in  the 
tropics  would  be  an  unfit  marriage.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  marriage  of  a  blonde  with  a 

[59] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

brunette  would  be  fit,  for  the  darker  consort 
would  .bring  into  the  combination  the  de- 
terminer for  pigment  and  ensure  a  dark  pro- 
geny. In  the  tropics,  then,  the  marriage  of 
light  with  dark  or  of  two  dark  persons  is,  by 
hypothesis,  a  fit  mating  while  that  of  two 
blondes  is  unfit." 

If  the  statements  of  Bateson  and  Dav- 
enport should  seem  hard  reading  the  fault 
lies  with  the  facts  themselves,  which  are  hard 
thinking.  So  elaborate  an  organism  as  Rich- 
ard Roe  was  not  built  up  in  a  day  nor  a  gen- 
eration nor  a  century  of  centuries.  The  huge 
complex  of  orderly  change  and  progressive 
adaptation  to  conditions  which  we  call  or- 
ganic evolution  is  the  one  unified  concentrated 
marvel  of  the  Universe.  And  even  Mendel- 
ism  does  not  explain  all  nor  nearly  all  of  the 
phenomena  of  inheritance.  It  deals  with  cer- 
tain simple  characters  which  seem  to  be  trans- 
ferred as  a  whole, — the  yellow  of  peas,  the 
short  hair  of  guinea  pigs,  the  white  and  yel- 
low of  the  web  of  silk-worms  spinning,  the 
dark  color  of  the  iris  and  simple  units  in 
heredity. 

[60] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

But  in  the  more  complex  traits  of  Rich- 
ard Roe  we  find  a  degree  of  blending  and  of 
overlapping  which    it    is    often 


Last  Word 
on  Heredity 
Unsaid 


beyond  our  power  to  analyze  or 
to  explain.  In  his  family  affairs 
we  find  inconsistencies,  and  we 
catch  glimpses  of  principles  which  cross  the 
Mendelian  principles  at  various  angles  and 
which  show  us  that  the  last  word  on  heredity 
is  not  yet  said  and  may  not  be  said  for  cen- 
turies to  come.  The  blended  inheritance,  as 
that  of  the  mulatto,  when  the  characters  of 
two  races  or  species  are  inextricably  mixed, 
has  not  yet  yielded  to  Mendelian  analysis. 
The  ordinary  mosaic,  in  which  unchanged 
characters  from  either  parent  exist  side  by 
side  in  the  young,  as  in  Goethe's  poem,  "Vom 
Vater  hab'  ich  die  Statur/'  is  more  readily 
reconciled  with  the  Mendelian  experiences. 

While  in  a  few  individual  traits  we  may 
recognize  ourselves  as  dominants  or  reces- 
sives,  in  ten  thousand  others  we  belong  mid- 
way with  the  cross-bred,  and  our  fathers  and 
our  mothers  were  in  the  same  condition.  It 
is  only  when  like  mates  with  like  that  the 


[61] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

Mendelian  conditions  appear  clearly  in  our 
inheritance. 

Goethe  thus  describes  his  own  hered- 
ity:* 

««  Stature  from  father  and  the  mood 

Stern  views  of  life  compelling  ; 
From  mother  I  take  the  joyous  heart 

And  the  love  of  story-telling. 

"  Great-grandsire's  passion  was  the  fair, 

What  if  I  still  reveal  it  ? 
Great -granddam's,  pomp  and  gold  and  show, 

And  in  my  bones  I  feel  it. 

"Of  all  the  various  elements 

That  make  up  this  complexity, 
What  is  there  left  when  all  is  done, 

To  call  originality  ?  ' ' 

And  in  like  manner  and  with  like  fail- 
ure in  originality,  you,  my  gentle  reader,  are 
built  up,  and  likewise  Richard  Roe  and  all 
the  rest  of  us,  with  here  and  there  many 
dominants  in  plain  view,  and  many  recessives 
fortunately  or  unfortunately  hidden,  with 
here  and  there  a  fragment  of  the  simple 

*  Goethe's  Zahme  Xenien  VI.      This  translation  is,  in 
part,  that  of  Bayard  Taylor. 

[63] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

Mendelian  order,    traceable  in    the  lowlier 
lives  of  guinea  pigs  and  peas. 

In  all  this  we  have  dealt  with  the  possi- 
bilities of  Richard  Roe  viewed  simply  as  the 
sexless  embryo,   the  joined  pro- 


Deiermina- 
tion  of  Sex 


toplasm  and  united  chromo- 
somes of  the  two  parent  germ 
cells.  This  germ  has  now  to 
grow  and  expand  by  cell  division.  But  be- 
sides its  vegetative  growth  two  possible  lines 
of  development  lie  before  it,  one  of  which  it 
must  take.  It  must  assume  sex.  It  must  be- 
come either  male  or  female.  It  is  so  written 
in  the  book  of  fate.  The  choice  of  the  one 
at  the  critical  time  is  as  feasible  as  that  of 
the  other.  There  are  in  the  long  run  as  many 
men  as  women  in  the  world,  as  many  females 
as  males  in  almost  every  species.  But  once 
made,  the  choice  is  irrevocable.  Thus  far 
man  has  found  no  way  to  control  this  choice 
and  Nature  makes  it  for  him.  The  sexless 
embryo  is,  as  it  were,  suspended  on  a  hair,  to 
be  turned  to  male  or  female  by  the  first  stimu- 
lus which  may  reach  it.  Or  if,  by  chance,  the 
embryo  is  not  really  sexless  and  the  determi- 


[63] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

nation  lies  in  the  nature  of  the  germ  cell 
itself — some  male,  some  female  by  structure 
of  protoplasm  or  maybe  through  the  struc- 
ture of  the  one  odd  chromosome, — this,  too, 
turns  on  the  weight  of  a  hair  and  we  know  no 
way  to  control  or  to  modify  it.  But  whatever 
the  determinant,  in  the  human  race,  the  germ 
cell  can  be  reached  only  through  the  mother. 
How  sex  comes,  no  one  has  yet  actually 
found  out. 

It  has  long  been  known  that  with  cer- 
tain insects  and  crustaceans  full  nutrition  in- 
creases the  number  of  females;  starvation  of 
the  mother  gives  more  males  among  the 
young.  It  might  be  so  with  the  human  race, 
but  it  probably  is  not.  In  any  event,  experi- 
ments do  not  seem  to  bear  out  the  theory. 
The  prescription  of  a  proteid  diet  to  produce 
males  and  a  fatty  diet  for  females  has  been 
relegated  to  the  realm  of  quackery.  Many 
other  suggestions  have  been  made  which  need 
not  be  discussed  here,  for  they  seem  to  be  all 
equally  futile.  In  general  we  may  say  that 
the  determination  at  will  of  sex  in  offspring 
is  not  theoretically  impossible.  But  the  ele- 

[64] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

ments  involved  are  too  obscure  and  complex 
for  certainty  to  be  probable.  It  is,  moreover, 
an  open  question  whether  the  general  diffu- 
sion of  such  power  would  be  a  boon  to  man- 
kind. 

In  any  event,  Richard  Roe  became  male. 
Whether  <vir  or  homo,  real  man  or  male  hu- 
man being,  is  another  question.  This  rests 
with  heredity  on  the  one  hand  and  with  en- 
vironment on  the  other.  But  between  the  one 
and  the  other  enters  the  fact  of  sex.  What- 
ever the  cause,  whether  resident  in  the  germ 
cells  or  not,  whether  due  to  nature  or  to  nur- 
ture, need  not  concern  us  now.  The  fact  of 
masculinity  becomes  more  and  more  domi- 
nant as  his  growth  goes  on.  At  last  it  affects 
all  his  activities,  modifies  all  his  structures, 
and  permeates  every  fiber  of  his  being.  Then 
is  Richard  Roe  a  man,  and  our  formula  of  his 
possibilities  is  modified  by  that  overshadow- 
ing fact.  But  his  heredity  characters  are  ar- 
ranged and  assigned  before  the  question  of 
his  sex  is  determined  by  nature. 

This  sum  of  his  possibilities  may  be  for- 
mulated as  follows :  Richard  Roe  has  the  sum 

[65J 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

of  species  characters:  race  characters;  one 
unequal  fourth  of  father's  peculiarities;  one 
~ I  unequal  fourth  of  mother's 

..      peculiarities;     one-sixteenth     of 
formula  of  ,  , ,.    ,      ,  ,. 

rr      ...  paternal   grandfather  s  peculiar- 

I     ities ;    one-sixteenth  from    mater- 


nal grandfather;  one-sixteenth  from  each 
grandmother;  one  sixty-fourth  from  each 
great-grandparent,  etc.;  an  unknown  and 
certainly  negligible  part  of  the  gain  through 
the  father's  activity;  an  unknown  and  negli- 
gible part  of  gain  through  the  mother's  ac- 
tivity; an  unknown  part,  fortunately  also 
negligible,  of  loss  through  the  idleness  or 
non-development  of  each;  an  unknown  and 
doubtful  change  through  prenatal  influences 
received  through  the  mother;  the  whole  re- 
duced by  untoward  influences  many  or  few 
arising  from  transmission  or  failure  in  early 
nutrition,  and  to  be  modified  in  every  part  by 
the  fact  that  he  is  a  man. 

But  these  fractions  indicate  only  poten- 
tialities. These  make  up  the  architect's  plan 
on  which  Richard  Roe  is  to  be  built.  The 
plan  admits  of  much  room  for  deviation. 

[66] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

Every  wind  that  blows  will  change  it  a  little. 
These  elements  themselves  are  of  varied 
character.  They  do  not  belong 


Potentiali- 
ties not 
Character 


together  nor  are  they  held  in 
place,  so  far  as  we  know,  by 
any  "ego"  except  that  made  by 
the  cell  alliance  on  which  they 
depend.  Some  of  these  elements  the  experi- 
ences of  life  will  tend  to  reduce  or  destroy. 
Some  of  them  will  be  systematically  fostered 
or  checked  by  those  who  determine  Richard 
Roe's  early  environment.  The  final  details 
will  be  beyond  prediction.  The  ego  or  self 
in  the  life  of  Richard  Roe  is  the  sum  of  his 
inheritance,  bound  together  by  the  resultant 
of  the  consequences  of  the  thoughts  and 
deeds  which  have  been  performed  by  him 
and  by  others  also.  Thus  each  day  in  his 
life  goes  to  form  a  link  in  the  chain  which 
binds  his  conscious  processes  together.  The 
"vanished  yesterdays"  are  the  tyrants  of  to- 
morrow. The  higher  heredity  is  the  heredity 
from  ourselves. 

The  art  of  life  is  in  a  large  degree  the 
process  of  "holding  one's  self  together."  The 


[67] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

ego  is  the  expression  of  the  result  of  this 
process.  Just  as  "England"  exists  only  as 
the  co-operation  of  all  English- 


The 

Higher 

Heredity 


men,  so  does  the  mental  "ego" 
exist  only  in  the  co-ordination 
of  working  nerve  cells.  The 
theory  that  the  ego  is  a  separate 
being  which  plays  on  the  organs  of  the  brain 
as  a  musician  on  the  keys  of  a  piano  belongs 
not  to  science  but  to  poetry.  As  well  think 
of  England  as  a  disembodied  organism  that 
plays  on  the  hearts  of  Englishmen,  leading 
them  to  acts  of  glory  or  of  shame.  This, 
too,  might  be  poetry ;  it  is  not  fact. 

The  unity  of  life,  which  is  its  sanity,  de- 
pends on  bringing  the  various  elements  to 
work  as  one  force.  Duality  or 
plurality  in  life,  the  "leading  of 
a  double  life"  of  any  sort,  is  an 
evidence  of  some  kind  of  failure 
or  disintegration.  "Science  finds  no  ego,  self, 
or  will  that  can  maintain  itself  against  the 
past."  In  other  words,  from  the  past,  its  in- 
heritance and  its  experience,  the  elements  of 
the  present  are  always  drawn.  The  con- 


[68] 


The  Unit) 
of  the  Ego 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

sciousness  of  man  is  not  the  whole  of  man. 
It  is  not  an  entity  working  among  materials 
foreign  to  itself.  It  is  rather  the  flame  that 
flickers  over  embers  set  on  fire  long  before 
and  whose  burning  may  go  on  long  after  the 
individual  flame  has  ceased  to  be. 

The  personality  of  Richard  Roe  is  a 
result  of  co-operation  of  his  parts.     His  self- 
consciousness    arises    from    the 
working  together  of  his   higher 


The  Ego 


nerve  cells.     That  it  arose  from 
Corpora/ion  ,  .     , 

many,   not   from  any  particular 


one,  gave  it  in  some  degree  the  semblance  of 
being  apart  from  them  all.  But  this  was  only 
a  semblance,  and  the  elements  of  which  his 
personality  was  made  had  been  used  before 
him  by  many  others. 

With  all  this,  we  may  be  sure  that  the 
stream  of  Richard  Roe's  life  will  not  rise 
much  above  its  potential  fountain.  He  will 
have  no  powers  far  beyond  those  some  of  his 
ancestors  possessed.  But  who  can  tell  what 
powers  have  remained  latent  in  these  ances- 
tors? It  takes  a  series  of  peculiar  circum- 
stances to  bring  any  group  of  qualities  into 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

notice.  Those  men  who  are  famous  in  spite 
of  an  unknown  ancestry  are  not  necessarily 
very  different  from  this  ancestry. 


Fame 

Not 

Greatness 


Fame  is  a  jutting  crag  which 
may  project  from  a  very  low 
mountain.  Far  higher  eleva- 
tions may  not  catch  the  eye  if 
their  outline  is  not  unusual.  Even  under 
the  plebeian  name  by  which  "Fate  tried  to 
conceal  him,"  Richard  Roe  may  receive  a 
noble  heritage.  Doubtless  it  may  be  passed 
on  to  the  next  generation,  not  the  less  noble 
because  it  has  not  been  exposed  to  the  dis- 
tortions of  fame.  Real  greatness  is  as  often 
the  expression  of  the  wisdom  of  the  mother 
as  of  anything  the  father  may  have  been  or 
done.  As  society  is  now  constituted,  the 
great  hearts  and  brains  of  the  future  may  be 
looked  for  anywhere.  They  will  not  fail  to 
come  when  needed,  and  in  most  cases  they 
will  appear  unheralded  by  ancestral  notori- 
ety, but  never  without  ancestral  force. 

Francis  Thompson  wisely  observes: 
"Constant  intermarriage  within  the  limits  of 
a  patrician  class  begets  effete  refinement.  To 


[70] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

reinvigorate  the  stock,  its  veins  must  be  re- 
plenished from  hardy  plebeian  blood."  He  is 
speaking  of  patrician  words,  or  words  sanc- 
tioned by  poetic  usage,  but  his  figure  of 
speech  is  drawn  from  the  facts  in  human  life. 
As  a  rule,  the  mother  in  the  household 
remains  concealed  from  the  illuminations  of 
fame.  In  the  register  of  soci- 

Th 

ety,  even  her  name  tends  to 
vanish.  But  her  part  in  hered- 
ity is  not  less  than  that  of  the 
father.  Her  part  in  the  higher  heredity,  the 
character  each  man  works  out  for  himself,  is 
even  greater.  In  spite  of  the  facts  of  race- 
suicide,  and  the  numbers  of  foolish  wives  and 
broken  families,  motherhood  was  never  so 
highly  esteemed  in  civilized  races  as  it  is  to- 
day. Never  were  women  so  well  fitted  for 
their  obligations  for  duties  which  do  not 
cease  with  child-bearing,  but  continue 
through  the  noble  degrees  of  child-rearing 
and  lifelong  sympathy  and  friendship. 

The  modern  freedom  and  the  training 
of  women  are  elements  which  make  them 
wiser  and  stronger  and  more  competent  as 

[Til 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

human  beings,  and  therefore  as  women  also. 
The  "gilded  youth"  and  the  "smart  set"  are 
not  typical  of  American  manhood  or  woman- 
hood and  Richard  Roe  is  not  of  their  kind, 
for  he  belongs  to  a  type  that  lasts. 

In  the  beginning    Richard    Roe  is  the 
helpless  product  of  the  forces  which  called 
him  into    being  and    of  the  in- 
stincts   and    functions    inherited 


Self- 


ery  with  this  helplessness.     But  once 


established  on  the  earth,  he  becomes  more 
and  more  "the  captain  of  his  fate,  the  master 
of  his  soul,"  until  waning  manhood  shall  re- 
duce him  again  to  childish  inefficiency.  But 
through  all  the  struggles  by  which  he  builds 
up  his  character  and  life,  he  must  act  with  the 
tools  his  ancestors  have  given  him  and  with 
these  only.  It  is  too  late  to  give  him  better 
tools,  but  his  failures  may  be  a  help  to  his 
descendants.  He  may  develop  from  them 
some  formula  by  which  these  may  be  well 
born,  his  sons  through  life  competent  for  the 
duties  of  manhood,  or  his  daughters  adequate 
for  the  responsibilities  of  womanhood. 

And  out  of  this  thought  has  grown  up 

[72] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

the  science  and  the  art  of  Eugenics,  the  sci- 
ence and  art  of  being  well  born.  He  is  well 
born  who  comes  of  good  stock. 


Eugenics  He  is  twice  well  born  if  his  com- 
binations  work  toward  well-bal- 
anced and  effective  ends,  measuring  the  value 
of  life  by  health,  happiness  and  effectiveness  in 
action. 

We  cannot  help  ourselves  in  this  regard, 
but  we  may  look  towards  the  future  and  help 
the  next  generation.  Many  investigations 
have  been  made  of  the  conditions  of  wise 
mating,  and  we  have  many  records  of  these 
conditions  which  insure  unhappiness  and  in- 
effectiveness in  the  generations  to  follow. 
The  pedigrees  of  strong  men  have  been 
traced  that  we  may  know  how  to  explain  their 
strength.  We  have  also  the  pedigrees  of  the 
dissolute,  the  feeble-minded,  the  idle,  the  de- 
fective. We  find  in  these  that  evil  and  weak- 
ness rarely  originate  de  novo,  but  that  they 
are  handed  down  as  a  baneful  legacy  from 
generation  to  generation. 

There  are  many  conditions  which  lie  out- 
side of  heredity  which  may  render  a  person, 

[73] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 


otherwise  acceptable,  unfit  for  the  high  office 
of  parenthood.  To  have  one's  tissues  infected 
with  the  venomous  little  parasitic 


Parasitic 
Diseases 


organisms,  plant  or  animal,  which 
cause  the  disease  known  as  syphilis, 
is  to  ensure  the  permanence  of  the 
same  disease  in  mother  and  in  offspring.  It  is 
not  a  matter  of  heredity.  The  germs  of  the 
minute  organism  Spirocbcete  are  borne  in  the 
blood  and  permeate  the  tissues,  dissolving  the 
capillary  walls,  and  causing  the  death  in  life  of 
mother  and  child.  Scarcely  less  destructive, 
though  less  reeking  in  venom,  is  the  plant  Gon- 
occocus,  the  other  agent  of  the  Red  Plague,  the 
potent  cause  of  sterility,  of  infant-blindness, 
of  the  incompatibilities  of  life  which  find 
eruption  in  the  divorce  courts. 

Dr.    Charles    B.    Davenport    has    well 

said :  "Governments    spend    scores    of  thou- 

I     sands  of    dollars    and    establish 

acenport        T[g[d  inspections  to    prevent  the 

D  JDI  spread  of  the    coitus   disease  of 

Red  Plague       r 

the    horse,     but     the    Spiroch<ete 


parasite  that  causes   the    corresponding    dis- 
ease in  men    and    entails    endless    misery  on 


[74] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF        RICHARD        ROE 

hundreds  of  thousands  of  innocent  children 
may  be  disseminated  by  anybody,  and  is  be- 
ing disseminated  by  scores  of  thousands  of 
persons  in  this  country,  unchecked,  under  the 
protection  of  the  'personal  liberty'  flag.  Alas ! 
that  so  little  thought  is  had  to  the  loss  of  lib- 
erty of  the  infected  children.  Marriage  of 
persons  with  venereal  disease  is  not  only  un- 
fit, it  is  a  hideous  and  dastardly  crime;  and 
its  frequency  would  justify  a  medical  test  of 
all  males  before  marriage,  innocent  as  well 
as  guilty.  Fortunately  there  exists  for  syph- 
ilis at  any  rate  a  test  so  simple  that  there  can 
be  no  more  objection  on  any  sentimental 
ground  to  it  than  to  vaccination." 

The  various  effects  of  drugs  belong  to 
Euthenics  rather  than  to  Eugenics,    for  ap- 
parently they  have  no  direct  re- 


Effcctsof 
Alcoholism 


lation  to  heredity.  Experience 
shows  that  the  use  of  alcohol  or 
any  other  nerve-affecting  drug  in 
extreme  degree  is  often  accompanied  by  de- 
fective offspring.  But  as  to  the  relation  of 
cause  and  effect,  there  is  doubt  in  each  indi- 
vidual case.  Alcoholism  is  often  in  itself  evi- 


[75] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD        ROE 

dence  of  feeble-mindedness.  It  may  be  at 
once  cause,  effect  and  symptom.  Whether  the 
use  of  alcohol  injures  the  germ-cells  and  im- 
pairs their  development,  whether  an  alcoholic 
environment  is  one  which  limits  the  normal 
strength  of  youth,  or  whether  one  or  all  of 
these  evil  influences  may  exist  in  the  individ- 
ual case,  is  generally  an  open  question.  There 
is  no  question  as  to  the  injury  to  the  individ- 
ual in  the  continuous  use  of  the  nerve  de- 
pressant, alcohol.  Dr.  Cushny,  the  London 
pharmacologist,  truly  observes  that  "if  alco- 
hol were  a  new  synthetic  drug  imported 
from  Germany  and  a  few  cases  of  alco- 
holism had  been  discovered  as  resulting 
from  it,  there  would  be  such  an  outcry 
against  it  that  it  would  be  forever  prohibited. 
A  much  more  valuable  drug,  cocaine,  has 
nearly  come  to  this  fate  on  account  of  a  few 
isolated  cases  in  which  the  cocaine  habit  has 
been  formed."  But  the  relation  of  alcohol 
to  heredity  is  as  yet  far  from  clear.  It  would 
appear  that  alcoholism  as  such  is  not  inher- 
ited, at  least  not  as  "alcoholism."  The  men- 
tal and  moral  defects  in  which  inebriety  rests 

[76] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

may  be  inherited,  like  causes  producing  like 
results  in  succeeding  generations.  Or  alcohol 
or  other  drugs  may  so  disorganize  the  ner- 
vous system  that  sound  offspring  may  become 
impossible.  In  such  case,  the  inheritance 
would  more  likely  take  such  a  form  as  that 
of  epilepsy. 

This  we  may  assume  in  all  cases :  "Every 
abnormal  condition  is  induced  by  something." 
Normal  parents  do  not  produce  abnormal  off- 
spring. When  a  child  is  half-witted  or  epi- 
leptic, for  example,  unless  the  condition  be 
the  direct  product  of  disease,  we  may  look 
for  imbecility  somewhere  in  its  ancestry.  In 
the  words  of  Davenport: 

"That  imbecility  is  due  to  the  absence 

of  some  definite  simple  factor  is  indicated  by 

I     the  simplicity  of  its  method  of 

avenport        inheritance.      Two  imbecile   pa- 
on  Feeble-  ,      ,  ,        , 

a/f.  j  j  rents,    whether    related    or  not, 

Mmdedness      ,  .      .    ,      .,          _ 

have     only    imbecile     offspring. 


Barr  gives  us  such  data  as  the  following 
from  his  experience.  A  feeble-minded  man 
of  thirty-eight  has  a  delicate  wife  who  in 
twenty  years  has  borne  him  nineteen  defec- 

[77] 


THE        HEREDITY        OF        RICHARD       ROE 

tive  children.  A  feeble-minded  epileptic 
mother  and  an  irresponsible  father  have 
seven  idiotic  and  imbecile  children.  The 
"L."  family  numbers  seven  persons,  both 
parents  and  all  five  children  imbecile.  Among 
the  'family  records'  I  have  been  collecting 
there  occurs  the  "R."  family  where  "A"  (in- 
sane) marries  in  succession  two  mentally 
weak  wives  and  has  thirteen  children,  all 
mentally  weak.  In  a  case  described  by  Ben- 
nett, a  defective  father  and  imbecile  mother 
have  seven  children  all  more  or  less  mentally 
and  morally  defective.  There  is,  so  far  as  I 
am  aware,  no  case  on  record  where  two  im- 
becile parents  have  produced  a  normal  child. 
So  definite  and  certain  is  the  result  of  the 
marriage  of  two  imbeciles,  and  so  disastrous 
is  reproduction  by  an  imbecile  under  any  con- 
ditions, that  it  is  a  disgrace  of  the  first  mag- 
nitude that  thousands  of  children  are  annu- 
ally born  in  this  country  of  imbecile  parents 
to  replace  and  probably  more  than  replace 
the  deaths  in  the  army  of  about  150,000 
mental  defectives  which  this  country  sup- 
ports. The  country  owes  it  to  itself  as  a 

[T8J 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

matter  of  self  preservation  that  every  imbe- 
cile of  reproductive  age  should  be  held  in 
such  restraint  that  reproduction  is  out  of  the 
question.  If  this  proves  to  be  impracticable 
then  sterilization  is  necessary — where  the  life 
of  the  state  is  threatened  extreme  measures 
may  and  must  be  taken." 

Davenport  continues:  "While  the  ac- 
quisition of  new  data  is  desirable,  much  can 
be  done  by  studying  the  extant  records  of  in- 
stitutions. The  amount  of  such  data  is  enor- 
mous. They  lie  hidden  in  records  of  our 
numerous  charity  organizations,  our  42  in- 
stitutions for  the  feeble-minded,  our  115 
schools  and  homes  for  the  deaf  and  blind, 
our  350  hospitals  for  the  insane,  our  1200 
refuge  homes,  our  1300  prisons,  our  1500 
hospitals  and  our  2500  almshouses.  Our 
great  insurance  companies  and  our  college 
gymnasiums  have  tens  of  thousands  of  rec- 
ords of  the  characters  of  human  blood  lines. 
These  records  should  be  studied,  their  hered- 
itary data  sifted  out  and  properly  recorded 
on  cards,  and  the  cards  sent  to  a  central 
bureau  for  study  in  order  that  data  should  be 

[79] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

placed  in  their  proper  relations  in  the  great 
strains  of  human  protoplasm  that  are  cours- 
ing through  the  country.  Thus  could  be 
learned  not  only  the  method  of  heredity  of 
human  characteristics,  but  we  shall  identify 
those  lines  which  supply  our  families  of  great 
men:  our  Adamses,  our  Abbotts,  our  Beech- 
ers,  our  Blairs,  and  so  on  through  the  alpha- 
bet. We  shall  also  learn  whence  come  our 
300,000  insane  and  feeble-minded,  our  160, 
ooo  blind  or  deaf,  the  2,000,000  that  are 
annually  cared  for  by  our  hospitals  and 
Homes,  our  80,000  prisoners  and  the  thou- 
sands of  criminals  that  are  not  in  prison,  and 
our  100,000  paupers  in  almshouses  and  out. 
"This  three  or  four  per  cent,  of  our 
population  is  a  fearful  drag  on  our  civiliza- 
tion. Shall  we  as  an  intelligent  people,  proud 
of  our  control  of  nature  in  other  respects,  do 
nothing  but  vote  more  taxes  or  be  satisfied 
with  the  great  gifts  and  bequests  that  philan- 
thropists have  made  for  the  support  of  the 
delinquent,  defective  and  dependent  classes? 
Shall  we  not  rather  take  the  steps  that  scien- 
tific study  dictates  as  necessary  to  dry  up  the 

[80] 


THE   HEREDITY   OF   RICHARD   ROE 

springs  that  feed  the  torrent  of  defective  and 
degenerate  protoplasm? 

"Greater  tasks  than  those  contemplated 
in  the  broadest  scheme  of  the  Eugenics  com- 
mittee have  been  carried  out  in  this  country. 
If  only  one-half  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  30 
million  dollars  annually  spent  on  hospitals, 
20  millions  on  insane  asylums,  20  millions  for 
almshouses,  13  millions  on  prisons,  and  5 
millions  on  the  feeble-minded,  deaf  and  blind 
were  spent  on  the  study  of  the  bad  germ- 
plasm  that  makes  necessary  the  annual  ex- 
penditure of  nearly  100  millions  in  the  care 
of  its  produce,  we  might  hope  to  learn  just 
how  it  is  being  reproduced  and  the  best  way 
to  diminish  its  further  spread.  A  new  plague 
that  rendered  four  per  cent,  of  our  popula- 
tion, chiefly  at  the  most  productive  age,  not 
only  incompetent,  but  a  burden  costing  100 
million  dollars  yearly  to  support  would  in- 
stantly attract  universal  attention,  and  mil- 
lions would  be  forthcoming  for  its  study  as 
they  have  been  for  the  study  of  cancer.  But 
we  have  become  so  used  to  crime,  disease  and 
degeneracy  that  we  take  them  as  necessary 

[81] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

evils.  That  they  were,  in  the  world's  ig- 
norance, is  granted.  That  they  must  remain 
so  is  denied." 

If  Richard  Roe  by  chance  is  a  defective, 
unable  by  heredity  to  rise  to  the  level  of 
helpfulness  and  happiness,  it  is  not  a  whole- 
some act  to  help  him  to  the  responsibilities  of 
parenthood.  It  is  a  wise  charity  to  make  him 
as  comfortable  as  may  be  with  the  assurance 
that  he  shall  be  the  last  of  his  line. 

And  because  the  evolution  of  man  may 

lead  downward  as  well  as  upward  it  is  well 

I     to  look  for    a    moment    at  the 

*e       "        questions  involved  in  human  de- 
tion 


generation. 


By  degeneration  is  meant  the  process 
by  which  a  living  being  changes  for  the 
worse.  This  implies  a  narrowing  range  of 
powers  and  capabilities.  The  word  is  op- 
posed In  meaning  to  change  for  the  better, 
which  we  call  progress  or  development. 

Throughout  the  animal  and  vegetable 
kingdoms  may  be  found  instances  of  degen- 
erate types.  There  are  species  or  groups  of 
species  which  have  declined  in  complexity  of 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

structure  and  range  of  activities  as  compared 
with  their  ancestors.  Degeneration  of  type 
appears  whenever  the  range  of 


Decline  in 
Range  of 
Activities 


competition  is  narrowed  or  incent- 
ive to  activity  lessened.  It  takes 
place  whenever  a  relaxation  of  the 
struggle  for  existence  permits  life 
on  a  lower  plane  of  activity  or  with  less  per- 
fect adaptation  to  conditions.  Thus  a  land 
animal  transferred  to  the  sea  has  its  range  of 
activity  narrowed.  There  is  competition 
from  fewer  quarters,  and  a  corresponding 
decline  of  competitive  structures  takes  place, 
with  the  intensification  of  those  functions  and 
instincts  which  deal  especially  with  marine 
life. 

The  most  striking  cases  of  degeneration 
are  those  of  quiescent  animals,  and  parasitic 
animals  and  plants,  as  com- 
pared with  their  free-swimming, 
self-dependent  ancestors.  Exam- 
ples of  degenerate  quiescent  ani- 
mals are  the  Tunicates.  These  creatures,  de- 
scended from  fishlike  ancestors,  are  for  the 
most  part  reduced  to  motionless  sacs,  buried 


[83] 


Quiescent 
Animals 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

in  the  sand  or  anchored  to  rocks  or  wharves. 
The  evidence  of  their  origin  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  the  young  Tunicate  is  tadpole- 
shaped,  with  a  rudimentary  backbone,  and 
has  the  motions  and  in  large  degree  the  struc- 
ture of  the  fish.  With  the  loss  of  power  of 
locomotion  the  structures  on  which  locomo- 
tion depends  also  disappear. 

Still  more  marked  is  the  degeneration  of 
parasites.    It  is  a  universal  rule  that  all  crea- 
tures  dependent  on   others   for 


Parasitic 
Animals 


support  lose  their  power  of  self- 
help.  Parasitic  insects  lose  their 
wings  and  are  confined  to  the 
bodies  of  those  unwillingly  made  their  hosts. 
Parasitic  worms  are  the  simplest  of  their 
kind.  Insects  feeding  on  the  juices  of  plants 
which  they  suck  without  moving  become  re- 
duced to  mere  living  scales. 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  example 
of  the  degeneration  of  parasitism  is  that  seen 
in  the  crustacean  called  Saccu- 
lina.  This  creature  appears  as  a 
simple  sac  attached  to  the  body 
of  the  crab,  into  which  its  root  processes  or 

[84] 


Sacculina 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

blood  vessels  extend.  When  it  is  hatched 
from  the  egg  it  is  similar  in  form  to  a  young 
crab,  independent  and  free-swimming.  It 
soon  attaches  itself  to  some  adult  crab,  into 
the  body  of  which  it  extends  its  processes. 
It  loses  its  power  of  locomotion,  and  the 
limbs  all  disappear.  Living  at  the  expense  of 
others,  self-activity  is  not  demanded,  and  its 
position  protects  it  from  competition  to  which 
free-swimming  crabs  are  subject.  It  becomes 
degraded  into  a  parasitic  sac,  with  no  organs 
except  a  nervous  ganglion,  the  ovaries,  and 
root  processes.  This  is  the  female  Sacculina, 
and  parasitic  upon  this  is  the  smaller  and  still 
more  degraded  male  of  the  same  species. 

The  Sacculina  is  the  type  of    race  de- 
generation among  animals  and  plants.   When 
the  stimulus  to  individual  activ- 


Animal 
Pauperism 
and  Human 
Pauperism 


ity  is  lowered  and  the  conditions 
of  environment  are  such  that 
destruction  does  not  follow  re- 
duced activity,  we  have  continuous  degenera- 
tion. This  is  the  condition  of  animal  pau- 
perism. It  is  the  survival  of  the  most  re- 
duced. The  same  general  laws  hold  good 


[85] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD       ROE 

among  men.  Inactivity  and  dependence,  pro- 
tection in  idleness,  bring  about  deterioration 
and  end  in  weakness,  incapacity  and  extinc- 
tion. 

It  is  true  that  all  advance  in  one  struc- 
ture implies  degradation  of  some  other.  This 
is  the  so-called  "law  of  compen- 


Law  of 
Compensa- 
tion 


sation."  The  specialization  of 
the  human  hand,  for  example, 
has  been  at  the  cost  of  the  hu- 
man foot.  The  power  to  live  by  his  wits  has 
taken  from  man  something  of  the  strength 
and  spryness  of  his  apelike  ancestors.  Any 
organ  tends  to  degenerate  when  its  highest 
function  loses  importance  or  is  replaced  by 
some  other.  To  have  one's  food  cooked 
means  the  reduction  of  the  lower  jaw  and  its 
muscles.  For  a  bird  to  trust  to  its  wings 
means  the  decline  of  the  strength  of  its  feet. 
Reduction  of  unused  parts  is  a  universal  rule 
in  organic  development.  Decline  in  all  parts 
is  the  essential  meaning  of  degeneration. 

As  commonly  used,  this  word  degenera- 
tion has  many  different  meanings,  and  often 
no  meaning  at  all.  A  degenerate  race  is  a  race 


[86] 


THE   HEREDITY   OF   RICHARD   ROE 

which  has  lost  its  best  elements,  by  war  or  em- 
igration or  other  causes,  which  lead  it  to  breed 
chiefly  from  its  worst  examples.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  collective  race  degeneration. 
The  best  are  not  harmed  directly,  because  the 
weak  survive.  It  is  only  the  average  which 
can  be  lowered.  Like  the  seed  is  the  har- 
vest. Heredity  runs  level  on  the  average. 
She  repeats  what  she  finds.  When  she  finds 
a  weakened  stock  after  a  great  war,  she 
makes  use  of  this  stock  to  continue  her  pop- 
ulation, of  a  lower  type.  With  men  as  with 
animals  it  is  always  that  which  is  left  which 
determines  the  future  of  the  race  or  breed. 
Selection  is  the  main  element  in  racial  change, 
and  selection  is  reversed  whenever  the  strong 
are  marked  for  destruction  and  the  weak  are 
allowed  to  survive. 

Any  group  of  men  gains  or  progresses 
with  the  struggle  for  opportunity,  with  edu- 
cation,  with   training,   with   the 


Race  De- 


combined  influences  of  art,   sci- 


clme  not  ,.    .  r™ 

,-,  „   t  ence  and  religion.      These  mat- 

Collectioe  .  .  , 

ters  involve  no  element  of  her- 


edity.    They  touch  only  the  individual  life. 

[87] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF        RICHARD        ROE 

These  are  matters  of  Nurture,  of  Euthenics. 
Race  improvement,  very  slow  at  the  best,  and 
concerned  only  with  averages,  can  rest  only 
on  selection.  Race-decadence,  equally  slow 
and  equally  a  matter  of  averages,  can  come 
only  from  reversal  of  selection.  No  race 
ever  rose  or  fell  as  a  whole.  When  the  Ro- 
mans were  almost  exterminated  by  continu- 
ous war,  there  were  still  Romans  as  noble  as 
in  the  days  of  Cincinnatus  or  of  Junius  Bru- 
tus. The  glory  of  a  nation  is  no  sign  that 
the  average  strength  of  its  people  is  not  fail- 
ing. The  actual  condition  of  a  nation  is  not 
judged  by  its  wealth,  by  its  universities,  its 
arts  or  science,  still  less  by  its  military  pomp 
or  prestige.  The  final  test  of  any  nation  is  in 
the  opportunity  it  gives  its  average  man  and 
still  more  in  the  fitness  of  the  average  man  to 
grasp  this  opportunity.  William  Allen  White 
observes:  "The  trash  heaps  of  history  are 
piled  high  with  nations  that  were  cruel  to 
those  who  did  their  rough  work.  The  land 
that  cheats  its  workers  cheats  itself." 

When  nations  decree  that  the  best  use 
of  the  common  man  is  to  make  him  "food  for 

[88] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

powder,"  "chair  pour  le  canon,"  in  Na- 
poleon's phrase,  national  glory  is  but  another 
name  for  national  weakness. 

As  the  destruction  of  the  unadapted  is 
the  chief  element  of  race  progress,  so  is  the 
survival  of  the  weak  the  chief  element  in  race 
decline.  Race-decadence  occurs  when  the 
strong  are  withdrawn  without  posterity,  when 
weakness  mates  with  weakness,  when  incen- 
tives to  individual  action  are  taken  away, 
without  reduction  in  security  of  life,  and 
when  the  unfit  are  sheltered  from  the  conse- 
quences of  their  folly,  weakness  or  perversity. 
The  increased  effectiveness  of  altruism  which 
goes  with  race  progress  furnishes  a  shelter 
under  which  race  decay  goes  on.  The 
growth  of  wisdom  makes  folly  safe.  At  the 
same  time  the  growth  of  wisdom  works  the 
death  of  fools  when  they  are  brought  into 
life-and-death  competition  with  those  strong- 
er and  wiser. 

In  the  open  competition  of  life  the  lin- 
eage of  degeneracy  is  a  short  one.  Each  in- 
dividual man  is  a  link  in  the  chain  of  life. 
His  intellect  is  its  guardian.  If  the  safe- 

[89] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

guard  is  weak,  the  link  will  be  broken.  Un- 
der ordinary  conditions  of  freedom  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  bad  heredity.  Our  ancestors 
are  sound  and  sane  each  in  a  fair  degree,  else 
we  should  not  have  seen  the  light. 

But  with  all  this  the  withered  branch 
may  occur  on  the  most  vigorous  trees.  Some 
descendant  will  show  defects  in 


Withered 
Branches 


nervous  system  or  in  balance  of 
qualities.  He  will  develop 
weakness  or  excess  in  sensitive- 
ness or  in  motor  response,  or  his  mental  oper- 
ations will  show  a  lack  of  that  accuracy  we 
call  common  sense.  Such  conditions,  if  in- 
born through  germ  variation,  may  become 
hereditary. 

It  is  the  fate  of  Richard  Roe  that  he 
shall  rise  through  the  various  stages  of  life, 
as  embryo,  child,  youth,  man, 
with  the  final  end  of  weakness 
and  death.  The  personal  de- 
generation of  old  age  no  man  has  learned  to 
avoid,  and  no  one  has  yet  found  his  way  to 
preserve  his  alliance  of  cells  from  the  final 
disintegration  which  spreads  from  his  weak- 


[90] 


Old  Age 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

est  organ.  Old  age  brings  nerve  decay  and 
organic  failure  to  the  strongest  man  at  last. 
The  wisest  finds  at  last  his  second  childhood. 
This  may  come  prematurely  under  conditions 
which  wear  out  life  too  rapidly.  These  in- 
fluences which  waste  life  are  manifold,  and  it 
is  part  of  the  fine  art  of  living  to  avoid  them. 
The  decline  of  races  is  going  on  at  all 
times  and  co-incident  with  race  progress. 
Which  force  may  have  the  upper 


Race  hand  at  any  time  is  a  matter  of 

Decadence  average,  and  an  average  decline 
in  manhood  may  be  accompa- 
nied by  a  rapid  advance  in  the  arts  of  civiliza- 
tion. This  means  that  the  race  is  splitting 
into  castes.  The  strong  are  separating  from 
the  mass,  the  rich  growing  richer  while  the 
poor  are  plunged  farther  into  poverty. 

Unfitness  in  any  race  may  be  preserved 
through  charity.  "Charity,"  says  a  French 
writer,  "causes  half  the  suffering 
she  relieves,  but  she  can  never 
relieve  half  the  suffering  she 
causes."  Unwise  charity  is  responsible  for 
half  the  pauperism  of  the  world.  That  pau- 


[91] 


Charity 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

perism  has  become  perpetual  is  due  in  part  to 
the  charity  that,  in  aiding  the  poor,  helps 
pauperism  to  mate  with  pauperism.  It  is  the 
duty  of  true  charity  to  remove  the  causes  of 
weakness  and  suffering.  It  is  equally  her 
duty  to  see  that  weakness  and  suffering  are 
not  needlessly  perpetuated. 

Startling  results  may  follow  from  the 
selective  breeding  and  preservation  of  pau- 
pers.    In  the  valley  of  Aosta,  in 


The  Cretins 
of  Aosta 


northern  Italy,  and  in  other  Al- 
pine regions  is  found  the  form 
of  idocy  known  as  cretinism.  What 
is  the  primitive  cause  of  the  cretin,  and  what  is 
the  causal  connection  of  cretinism  with  goitre, 
a  disease  of  the  thyroid  glands  which  always 
accompanies  it,  no  one  clearly  knows.  The 
goitre  is  caused  by  some  condition  of  nurture, 
of  housing,  food  or  water.  The  goitre  in 
children  causes  idiocy.  It  is  relieved  or  cured 
when  taken  early  by  small  doses  of  iodine. 

It  suffices  for  our  purpose  to  notice  that 
the  severe  military  selection  which  ruled  in 
Switzerland,  Savoy,  and  Lombardy  for  many 
generations  took  the  strongest  and  healthiest 


[92] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

peasants  to  the  wars,  and  left  the  idiot  and 
goitrous  to  carry  on  the  affairs  of  life  at 
home.  To  bear  a  goitre  was  to  exempt  from 
military  services.  It  is  said  that  when  iodine 
lozenges  were  given  to  the  children  of  Savoy 
in  the  hope  of  preventing  the  enlargement 
and  degeneration  of  the  thyroid  gland,  moth- 
ers would  take  this  remedy  away  from  the 
boys,  preferring  the  goitre  to  military  service. 

In  the  city  of  Aosta  the  goitrous  cretin 
has  been  for  centuries  an  object  of  charity. 
The  idiot  has  received  generous  support, 
while  the  poor  farmer  or  laborer  with  brains 
and  no  goitre  has  had  the  severest  of  strug- 
gles. In  the  competition  of  life  a  premium 
has  thus  been  placed  on  imbecility  and  dis- 
ease. The  cretin  has  mated  with  the  cretin  > 
the  goitre  with  the  goitre,  and  charity  and 
religion  have  presided  over  the  union.  The 
result  is  that  idiocy  is  multiplied  and  intensi- 
fied. The  cretin  of  Aosta  has  been  devel- 
oped as  a  new  species  of  man.  In  fair  weather 
the  roads  about  the  city  are  lined  with  these 
awful  paupers — human  beings  with  less  intel- 
ligence than  the  goose,  with  less  decency 

[93] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

than  the  pig.  The  asylum  for  cretins  in 
Aosta  is  a  veritable  chamber  of  horrors.  The 
sharp  words  of  Whymper  are  fully  justified: 

"A  large  proportion  of  the  cretins  who 
will  be  born  in  the  next  generation  will  un- 
doubtedly be  offsprings  of  cretin  parents.  It 
is  strange  that  self-interest  does  not  lead  the 
natives  of  Aosta  to  place  their  cretins  under 
such  restrictions  as  would  prevent  their  illicit 
intercourse;  and  it  is  still  more  surprising  to 
find  the  Catholic  Church  actually  legalizing 
their  marriage.  There  is  something  horribly 
grotesque  in  the  idea  of  solemnizing  the  union 
of  a  brace  of  idiots,  and,  since  it  is  well 
known  that  the  disease  is  hereditary  and  de- 
velops in  successive  generations,  the  fact  that 
such  marriages  are  sanctioned  is  scandalous 
and  infamous." 

True  charity  would  give  these  creatures 
not  less  helpful  care,  but  a  care  which  would 
guarantee  that  each  individual  cretin  should 
be  the  last  of  his  generation. 

This  I  wrote  in  1897.  I  let  it  stand, 
though  it  is  no  longer  true.  In  his  charming 
volume,  recently  published,  on  "The  Valley 

[94] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD        ROE 

of  Aosta,"  Felice  Ferrero  uses  the  following 
language : 

"The  cretins  of  the  valley  of  Aosta 
make  a  miserable  spectacle,  it  is  true;  more 
so  than  is  necessary,  as  many  roam  freely  in 
the  villages  and  importune  strangers,  beg- 
ging with  the  most  obdurate  insistence,  and 
forcing  into  evidence  their  horrible  bodies. 
The  evil  is,  however,  being  partially  reme- 
died by  corralling  the  unfortunate  creatures 
in  institutions,  where  they  are  decently  taken 
care  of. 

"  Cretinism  is  an  old  plague  in  the  Alps. 
It  is  said  to  have  been  known  in  ancient  times, 
and  was  described  at  length  in  the  seven- 
teenth century;  but  although  numerous  physi- 
cians have  since  studied  the  disease,  made 
experimental  researches  and  trials  in  corpore 
vili,  its  cause  is  almost  as  much  of  a  mystery 
as  in  centuries  past.  The  only  certain  data 
about  it  are  the  following:  that  cretinism  be- 
longs exclusively  to  mountainous  districts 
(although  not  necessarily  in  the  narrowest 
valleys) ;  that  it  is  connected  with  goitre 
(although  goitrous  people  are  not  necessarily 

[95] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD        ROE 

cretins) ;  that  it  is  connected,  like  goitre,  with 
the  atrophy  of  the  thyroid  gland;  that  it  is 
transmitted  by  heredity.  Beyond  this  not 
much  is  to  be  gathered,  although  the  litera- 
ture on  the  subject  is  extremely  abundant.  In 
1867  a  diligent  investigator  collected  as  many 
as  forty-two  causes  assigned  for  it:  the  lack 
of  light  and  air,  the  temperature,  the  vege- 
table diet,  the  use  of  pork,  alcoholism,  inter- 
marriage, the  nature  of  waters  and  air,  and 
what  not  else  besides !  One  official  document 
seriously  advances  the  theory  that  sin  is  the 
cause  of  the  malady,  and  that  confession  and 
the  Brautexamen  would  be  good  remedies; 
in  which  one  may,  if  he  will,  see  a  deeper 
truth  under  the  theologic  expression.  .  .  . 
But  so  far  there  is  not  much  definite  and  con- 
clusive material  to  rely  upon;  the  cretin  still 
wanders  aimlessly  about,  emitting  uncanny 
sounds  from  his  distorted  mouth,  a  clouded 
intelligence  in  a  useless  body — a  horrible  ex- 
ample of  the  miseries  that  flourish  by  the  side 
of  the  divine  glory  of  the  great  mountains." 
I  visited  Aosta  in  1881,  in  1883,  and 
again  in  1900,  verifying  in  full  the  state- 

[96] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

ments  of  Whymper  and  of  Ferrero.  In  these 
years,  cretins  were  seen  on  the  streets  every- 
where and  on  the  roads  which  lead  out  of 
Aosta.  Everywhere  were  these  feeble  little 
people,  with  silly  faces  and  sickening  smile, 
incapable  of  taking  care  of  themselves  and  all 
disfigured  by  the  goitre  at  the  neck.  Not 
every  person  with  the  goitre  is  an  idiot,  but 
every  idiot  has  the  goitre.  People  of  these 
two  classes  are  excluded  from  mating  with 
healthy  people,  and  both  are  excused  from 
military  service.  With  the  loss  of  the  nor- 
mal man  killed  in  battle,  leaving  the  weak  at 
home,  the  relative  number  of  goitres  and  of 
idiots  has  steadily  increased. 

In  1910,  I  visited  Aosta  for  a  further 
study  of  this  question.  To  my  surprise  I  was 
unable  for  some  time  to  find  a  single  cretin  or 
even  anybody  who  knew  the  meaning  of  the 
word.  I  found  that  some  twenty  years  ago 
Aosta  had  built  an  asylum  for  the  aged  poor 
(/'  f  overt  vecchi).  All  the  cretins  and  most 
of  the  goitrous  in  this  region  have  been  re- 
moved to  this  asylum,  the  men  segregated 
from  the  women  and  the  inmates  not  allowed 

[97] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

to  marry.  There  is  but  one  cretin  left,  an  old 
woman  four  feet  high,  who  has  the  intelli- 
gence and,  for  that  matter,  the  manners  of 
a  lap  dog,  very  affectionate,  but  without  any 
mental  capacity.  There  were  also  three  oth- 
ers, half  cretins,  illegitimate  children  of 
cretin  women.  As  regards  the  cretin  chil- 
dren, Suor  Lucia,  the  Mother  Superior,  said 
simply:  'II  n'y  en  a  plus'  (They  don't  come 
any  more). 

I  visited  the  orphan  asylums.  Every 
child  was  bright  and  alert  without  a  touch  of 
goitre  or  of  cretinism.  I  inspected  the  beg- 
gars standing  in  rows  at  the  railway  station, 
weak,  inconsequential,  useless,  most  of  them, 
but  not  a  cretin  among  them.  Cretinism,  like 
other  forms  of  feeble-mindedness,  is  de- 
scended from  cretinism.  It  finds  its  plain 
remedy  in  segregation  in  "the  guarantee  that 
each  individual  cretin  shall  be  the  last  of  his 
generation."  In  the  elimination  of  the 
cretin  y  there  are  elements  of  Euthenics  as 
well  as  of  Eugenics.  Cleanliness,  good  air, 
good  food,  as  also  the  use  of  iodine,  all  tend 
to  prevent  the  growth  of  the  goitre,  and  the 
goitre  is  in  itself  a  potent  cause  of  idiocy. 

[98] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

In  isolation  as  under  chanty,  weakness 
may  mate  with  weakness  and  perpetuate  de- 
generation.    The  classical  stud- 


Isolation 


The  JuJ 


ies  of  Dr.  Dugdale  into  the 
natural  history  of  the  group  of 
degenerates  called  "the  Jukes,"  the  descend- 
ants of  "Margaret,  the  mother  of  crimi- 
nals," shows  that  the  conditions  of  the  slums 
may  be  transferred  to  the  forests.  Outside 
of  the  swift  current  of  life  in  a  sheltered  nook 
of  the  mountains,  in  Orange 
County,  New  York,  this  family 
of  cut-throats  and  prostitutes 
found  a  place  for  development.  The  crush 
of  a  great  city  is  in  some  degree  an  instru- 
ment of  purification.  It  brings  evil  and  weak- 
ness into  close  competition  with  wisdom  and 
strength,  and  the  former  come  to  speedy  de- 
struction. The  evils  of  the  city  rise  from 
corrosion  rather  than  from  competition. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  pure  air  of  the  moun- 
tains that  will  purify  the  lineage  of  thieves 
and  paupers.  Doubtless  the  fact  of  isolation 
and  freedom  from  stress  of  competition  has 
been  a  factor  in  the  preservation  of  the  decay- 


[99] 


THE        HEREDITY        OF        RICHARD       ROE 

ing  Jukes,  and  the  same  conditions  bring 
about  the  results  in  the  declining  classes 
driven  from  the  plains  to  the  mountains  in 
other  parts  of  the  world.  The  Great  Smoky 
Mountains  are  not  responsible  for  the  poor 
~~  whites  of  the  highlands  of 
T&ePoor  North  Carolina.  These  people 
WlAies  belong  to  the  lineage  of  Eng- 


land's pauperism  transported  first  to  her  col- 
onies, afterward  driven  from  the  plains  to 
the  mountains  because  of  their  inability  to 
keep  slaves,  and  since  preserved  there  by  their 
isolation  from  new  currents  of  life.  In  like 
manner,  the  lowest  type  of  negroes  is  pre- 
served in  the  isolation  of  the  black  belt  of 
the  South,  the  swampy  regions  near  the  sea, 
in  which  white  people  cannot  live,  and  where 
the  negroes  are  not  subjected  to  the  stress  of 
industrial  competition.  Dr.  Charles  Wardell 
Stiles  has  lately  shown  that  both  whites  and 
blacks  of  these  lower  types  have  been  for  gen- 
erations infested  with  the  parasitic  worm 
Uncinaria,  a  cause  as  well  as  a  result  of  their 
hopeless  condition. 

This  world  is  not,  on  the  whole,  a  hard 

[100] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

world  to  live  in  if  one  has  the  knack  of  mak- 
ing the  proper  concessions.  Hosts  of  ani- 
mals, plants,  and  men  have  acquired  this 
knack,  and  they  and  their  descendants  are 
able  to  hold  their  own  in  the  pressure  of  the 
struggle  for  existence.  This  pressure  brings 
about  the  persistence  of  the  obedient,  those 
whose  activities  accord  with  the  demands  of 
their  environment.  This  persistence  of  the 
adaptive  is  known  as  the  survival  of  the  fit- 
test, which  has  through  the  ages  been  the 
chief  element  of  organic  progress.  Among 
men  there  have  always  been  those  to  whom 
the  art  of  living  was  impossible.  This  has 
been  the  case  under  ordinary  conditions  as 
well  as  under  extraordinary  ones.  It  must 
be  the  case  with  some  under  any  conceivable 
environment  or  any  circumstances  of  life. 
Some  variations  must  tend  in  the  direction  of 
incapacity.  This  incapacity  of  one  genera- 
tion, if  inborn  and  not  induced  by  disease  or 
malnutrition,  may  be  handed  down  by  the 
law  of  heredity  to  the  next. 

In  one  way  or  another,  in  time,  most 
of  the  incapables  are  eliminated  by  the  proc- 

[101] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

ess  of  natural  selection.    But  not  all  of  them. 
Our    social    system    is    bound    too    closely. 
Hereditary  incapacity  of  the  few  has  been  in 
all  ages  a    burden   on   the    men   who  could 
take  care  of  themselves.     With  higher  civili- 
zation and  an  increasing  recognition  of  the 
I     value  of  mutual    help    it  is  be- 
u ,ua  coming  more  and  more  possible 

for  those  to    live    who  do  not 


help.  The  descendants  of  these  increase  in 
number  with  the  others.  They  are  protected 
by  the  others.  Thus  the  future  of  hereditary 
weakness  is  a  growing  problem  in  our  social 
organization. 

Of  course,  the   conditions  of  life   have 
never  yet  made  the  "survival  of  the  fittest" 

the    real    survival   of   the  best. 

The  growth  of  civilization  ap- 
proaches this  end,  but  has 
never  reached  it.  If  this  were 
reached,  adaptation  to  the  conditions  of  life 
would  be  a  nobler  process  than  it  now  is.  It 
is  not  that  the  conditions  of  life  are  too  hard. 
We  would  not  make  them  easier  if  we  could. 
But  the  welfare  of  humanity  demands  that 


[102] 


The  Easy 
World 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

they  be  made  more  just.  An  easier  world 
would  be  one  in  which  idleness,  vice,  and  in- 
efficiency fare  better  than  now,  and  energy, 
virtue,  and  efficiency  correspondingly  worse. 
The  premium  natural  selection  places  on  self- 
activity  and  mutual  help  is  none  too  great  at 
the  best  and  should  not  be  lessened.  Nature 
is  over-indulgent  toward  idleness  rather  than 
too  cruel.  The  degradation  of  life  in  the 
tropics  comes  because  in  those  regions  the 
stress  of  the  human  struggles  is  distinctly 
lowered.  Action  and  virtue  count  for  little 
because  there  is  no  incentive  to  live  a  life 
worth  living,  and  no  adequate  penalty  for 
stagnation  and  inefficiency. 

It  is  easy  to  frame  indictments  against 
modern  society  and  its  organization.  We  may 
see  it  as  weak,  tyrannical,  depressing,  artifi- 
cial, brutal,  sensual,  frivolous,  or  unjust,  as 
we  may  give  attention  to  its  least  favorable 
manifestations.  Nevertheless,  the  social  or- 
ganism of  every  nation  is  as  good  as  man  has 
been  able  to  make  it.  In  the  evolution  of 
man  it  has  been  a  long  struggle  to  attain  even 
what  we  have.  Better  conditions  will  be  pos- 

[103] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

sible  with  better  material  in  humanity.  Bet- 
ter relations  demand  better  men.  The  more 
perfect  the  organism,  the  more  evident  are 
its  deviations  from  perfect  adaptation.  The 
character  of  a  nation  is  the  expression  of  the 
character  of  its  individual  units. 

It  may  be  that  in  the  conditions  of  life 
failure  is  not  due  to  any  defect  of  the  indi- 
vidual. Its  cause  has  often  arisen  in  injus- 
tice and  oppression  which  sometimes  makes 
the  just,  the  brave,  the  wise  man  an  outcast 
from  society.  Such  conditions  and  such  fail- 
ures occur  in  the  life  of  to-day.  But  under 
ordinary  conditions  those  who  fail  in  life  do 
so  because  of  the  lack  of  ability  to  make 
themselves  useful  to  others,  or  for  lack  of 
ability  to  place  themselves  in  harmony  with 
the  forces  of  Nature  with  which  they  are  sur- 
rounded. In  other  words,  most  of  those  who 
fail  are  doomed  to  perish  wherever  there  ex- 
ists any  form  of  competition,  and  no  life  is 
without  it.  The  inert,  untrained,  ignorant, 
or  vicious  are  constitutionally  unsuccessful, 
and  from  conditions  which  these  names  im- 
ply. Those  who  thus  fail  to  do  their  part  in 

fl04] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

the  struggle  of  life  must  become  a  burden  to 
be  carried  by  others  or  else  they  perish,  the 
victims  of  misery  they  can  make  no  efforts 
to  avoid.  Those  who  are  carried  by  society 
as  burdens  may  be  roughly  classified  as  pau- 
pers and  criminals — those  whom  society  vol- 
untarily support  and  those  supported 
through  society's  lack  of  means  of  self-protec- 
tion. Pauperism  and  habitual  criminality  are 
respectively  passive  and  active  states  of  the 
same  disease. 

In  this  sense    pauperism  is    not  by  any 
means  the  same  as  poverty.     Poverty  is  the 
absence    of   stored-up    economic 


Poverty 


force.     It  may  arise  from  sick- 


ness, accident,  or  from  various 
Pauperism  ,.  .  r^* 

temporary  conditions.     I  he  per- 


son now  subject  to  poverty  may  have  within 
himself  the  cure  for  it.  The  pauper  can  not 
cure  himself,  and  all  help  given  him  but  in- 
tensifies his  pauperism.  It  is  said  that  among 
the  poor  there  are  always  three  classes,  "the 
Lord's  poor,  the  Devil's  poor,  and  paupers." 
The  first  class  are  those  suffering  through 
misfortune,  the  second  the  victims  of  vice, 

[105] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

the  third,  those  incompetent  through  inherit- 
ance. 

There  are  various  conditions — sickness, 
dissipation,  the  weakness  of  age,  evil  associ- 
ations— that  may  plunge  the  average  man 
from  poverty  into  pauperism.  We  are  none 
too  well  equipped  for  the  struggle  of  life  at 
the  best,  and  the  loss  of  weapons  or  armor 
may  make  any  man  helpless  for  the  time 
being.  But  some  are  helpless  from  birth. 
There  is  in  every  nation  a  multitude  of  men 
and  women  to  whom  fitness  is  impossible.  In 
the  submerged  tenth  of  every  land  may  be 
found  the  broken  and  stricken,  the  ruined  in 
body  and  spirit.  But  the  majority  of  these 
have  never  been,  could  never  be  anything  else 
than  what  they  are.  They  are  simply  inca- 
pable, and  they  are  the  descendants  of  others 
who  in  similar  conditions  have  been  likewise 
incapable.  In  a  world  of  work  where  clear 
vision  and  a  clear  conscience  are  necessary  to 
life  they  find  themselves  without  sense  of  jus- 
tice, without  capacity  of  mind,  without  desire 
for  action.  They  are  born  to  misery,  and 
the  aggregate  of  misery  would  be  sensibly 
lessened  had  they  never  been  born. 

[106] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

It  is  a  fact  of  biology  that  whenever  any 
series  of  organisms  are  withdrawn  from  ac- 


The 
Human 

Sacculina 
Inactivity 


tive  life  and  the  process  of  natu- 
ral selection  no  longer  offers  a 
premium  for  self-activity,  degra- 
dation sets  in.  Organs  are  lost 
as  their  functions  are  abandoned.  In  this 
way  the  descent  of  the  inert  barnacle  from 
the  active  crablike  forms  is  accounted  for.  In 
similar  manner  the  degraded  parasitic  Sac- 
culina is  shown  to  be  of  crustacean  or  crab- 
like  origin.  The  young  Sacculina  and  the 
young  crab  are  essentially  alike  for  a  period 
after  their  birth.  The  crab  continues  and 
develops  an  active  life.  The  Sacculina 
thrusts  its  feelers  into  the  body  of  the  crab 
on  which  it  is  to  feed.  Its  organs  of  eating 
and  swimming  disappear.  All  structures  con- 
nected with  independent  life  become  atro- 
phied, and  finally  nothing  is  left  of  the  Sac- 
culina except  its  saclike  body,  its  feelers  or 
roots  ramifying  through  the  blood  vessels  of 
the  crab,  and  its  reproductive  organs  by 
which  the  brood  of  parasites  is  kept  alive. 
When  the  habit  of  parasitism  is  once  estab- 

[107] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

lished,  the  struggle  for  existence  simply  in- 
tensifies it  from  generation  to  generation. 

The  fittest  Sacculina  is  the  most  degen- 
erate one.  In  like  manner  whenever  a  race 
or  family  of  men  has  fallen  away  from  self- 
helpfulness  the  forces  of  evolution  intensify 
its  parasitism.  The  successful  pauper  is  the 
one  who  retains  no  capacity  for  anything  else. 
The  loss  of  all  other  possibilities  is  the  best 
preparation  for  the  life  of  the  sneak  thief. 

Recent  studies,  as  those  of  Dugdale, 
McCulloch,  Davenport,  and  many  others, 
have  shown  that  parasitism  is  hereditary  in 
the  human  species  as  in  the  Sacculina.  Mc- 
Culloch has  selected  the  Sacculina  for  special 
illustration  of  the  results  of  like  processes  in 
the  human  family.  Like  produces  like  in 
the  world  of  life.  Those  qualities  in  the 
grandparent  which  made  him  an  outcast  from 
society  or  a  burden  upon  it  reappear  in  the 
father  and  again  in  the  son.  As  in  one  case, 
so  in  the  others,  they  determine  his  relation 
to  society.  The  pauper  is  the  victim  of  her- 
edity, but  neither  nature  nor  society  recog- 
nizes that  as  an  excuse  for  his  existence.  The 

[108] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

forces  of  nature  take  no  account  of  motive 
and  are  no  respecters  of  persons.  Dugdale 
has  shown  that  parasitism,  pauperism,  prosti- 
tutism,  and  crime  reappear  generation  after 
generation  in  the  descendants,  of  "Margaret, 
the  mother  of  criminals."  McCulloch, 
speaking  of  the  descendants  of  a  pauper 
family  named  "Ishmael,"  in  the  city  of 
Indianapolis,  uses  the  following  language: 

"We  start  at  some  unknown  date  with 
thirty  families.     These  came    mostly    from 
Kentucky,  Tennessee,  and  North 


McCulloch 
on  "  The 
Tribe  of 
Ishmael" 


Carolina.  Of  the  first  genera- 
tion— of  sixty-two  individuals — 
we  know  certainly  of  only  three. 
In  the  second  generation  we  have  the  history 
of  eighty-four.  In  the  third  generation 
of  two  hundred  and  eighty-three.  In  the 
fourth  generation — 1840-1860 — we  have  the 
history  of  six  hundred  and  forty-four.  In 
the  fifth  generation — 1860-1880 — we  have 
the  history  of  six  hundred  and  seventy-nine. 
In  the  sixth  generation — 1880-1890  —  we 
have  the  history  of  fifty-seven.  Here  is  a 
total  of  seventeen  hundred  and  fifty  individu- 


[109] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

als.  Before  the  fourth  generation — from 
1840  to  1860 — we  have  but  scant  records. 
Our  most  complete  data  begin  with  the  fourth 
generation,  and  the  following  are  valuable. 
We  know  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-one 
prostitutes.  The  criminal  record  is  very 
large — petty  thieving,  larcenies  chiefly.  There 
have  been  a  number  of  murders.  The  first 
murder  committed  in  the  city  was  in  this  fam- 
ily. A  long  and  celebrated  murder  case, 
known  as  the  'Clem'  murder,  costing  the 
State  immense  amounts  of  money,  is  located 
here.  Nearly  every  crime  of  any  note  be- 
longs here.  Between  1868  and  1888  not  less 
than  five  thousand  dollars  has  been  paid  for 
'passing'  these  people  from  place  to  place, 
each  township  officer  trying  to  throw  off  the 
responsibility.  The  records  of  the  city  hos- 
pital show  that — taking  out  surgical  cases, 
acute  general  cases,  and  cases  outside  the  city 
— seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  cases  treated 
are  from  this  class.  The  number  of  illegiti- 
macies is  very  great.  The  Board  of  Health 
reports  that  the  number  of  stillborn  children 
found  in  sinks,  etc.,  would  not  be  less  than 

[no] 


THE   HEREDITY   OF   RICHARD   ROE 

six  per  week.  Deaths  are  frequent,  and 
chiefly  among  children.  The  suffering  of  the 
children  must  be  great.  The  people  have  no 
occupation.  They  gather  swill  or  ashes;  the 
women  beg,  and  send  the  children  around  to 
beg;  they  make  their  eyes  sore  with  vitriol. 
In  my  own  experience  I  have  seen  three  gen- 
erations of  beggars  among  them.  I  have  not 
time  here  to  go  into  details,  some  loathsome, 
all  pitiable.  One  evening  I  was  called  to 
marry  a  couple.  I  found  them  in  one  small 
room  with  two  beds.  In  all  eleven  people 
lived  in  it.  The  bride  was  dressing,  the 
groom  washing.  Another  member  of  the 
family  filled  a  coal-oil  lamp  while  burning. 
The  groom  offered  to  haul  ashes  for  the  fee. 
I  made  a  present  to  the  bride.  Soon  after  I 
asked  one  of  the  family  how  they  were  get- 
ting on.  'Oh,  Elisha  don't  live  with  her  any 
more.'  'Why?'  'Her  husband  came  back, 
and  she  went  to  him.  That  made  Elisha  mad, 
and  he  left  her.' 

"All  these  are  grim  facts,  but  they  are 
facts  and  can  be  verified.  More,  they  are 
but  thirty  families  out  of  a  possible  two  hun- 

[iil] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

dred  and  fifty.  The  individuals  already 
traced  are  over  five  thousand,  interwoven  by 
descent  and  marriage.  They  underrun  so- 
ciety like  devil  grass.  Pick  up  one,  and  the 
whole  five  thousand  will  be  drawn  up.  Over 
seven  thousand  pages  of  history  are  now  on 
file  in  the  Charity  Organization  Society. 

"A  few  deductions  from  these  data  are 
offered  for  your  consideration.  First,  this  is 
a  study  into  social  degeneration,  or  degrada- 
tion, which  is  similar  to  that  sketched  by 
Mr.  Lankester.  As  in  the  lower  orders,  so 
in  society,  we  have  parasitism,  or  social  deg- 
radation. There  is  reason  to  believe  that 
some  of  this  comes  from  old  convict  stock 
which  England  threw  into  this  country  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  We  find  the  wandering 
tendency  so  marked  in  the  case  of  'Cracker' 
and  the  Tike'  here.  'Movin'  on.'  There  is 
scarcely  a  day  that  the  wagons  are  not  to  be 
seen  in  our  streets ;  cur  dogs ;  tow-headed  chil- 
dren. They  camp  outside  the  city,  and  then 
beg.  Two  families  as  I  write  have  come  by, 
moving  from  north  to  south,  and  from  east 
to  west,  'hunting  work,'  and  yet  we  can  give 

[112] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD        ROE 

work  to  a  thousand  men  on  our  gas  trenches. 

"Next,  note  the  general  unchastity  that 
characterizes  this  class.  The  prostitution 
and  illegitimacy  are  large;  the  tendency 
shows  itself  in  incests  and  relations  lower 
than  the  animals  go.  This  is  due  to  the 
depravation  of  nature,  to  crowded  conditions, 
to  absence  of  decencies  and  cleanliness.  It 
is  an  animal  reversion  which  can  be  paralleled 
in  lower  animals.  The  physical  depravity  is 
followed  by  physical  weakness.  Out  of  this 
come  the  frequent  deaths,  the  stillborn  chil- 
dren, and  the  general  incapacity  to  endure 
hard  work  or  bad  climate.  They  cannot 
work  hard,  and  break  down  early.  They 
then  appear  in  the  county  asylum,  the  city 
hospital,  and  the  township  trustee's  office. 

"Third,  note  the  force  of  heredity. 
Each  child  tends  to  the  same  life,  reverts 
when  taken  out. 

"And,  lastly,  note  the  influence  of  the 
great  factor,  public  relief.  Since  1840  relief 
has  been  given  to  them.  At  that  time  we  find 
that  'old  E.  Huggins'  applied  to  have  his 
wife  Barthemia  sent  to  the  poorhouse.  A 

[us] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD        ROE 

premium  was  then  paid  for  idleness  and  wan- 
dering. The  amount  paid  by  the  township 
for  public  relief  varies,  rising  as  high  as 
$90,000  in  1876,  sinking  in  1878  to  $7,000, 
and  ranging  with  the  different  trustees  from 
$7,000  to  $22,000  per  year.  Of  this  amount 
fully  three-fourths  has  gone  to  this  class. 
Public  relief,  then,  is  chargeable  in  a  large  de- 
gree with  the  perpetuation  of  this  stock.  The 
township  trustee  is  practically  unlimited  in  his 
powers.  He  can  give  as  much  as  he  sees  fit. 
As  the  office  is  a  political  one,  about  the  time 
of  nomination  and  election  the  amounts  in- 
crease largely.  The  political  bosses  favor 
this  and  use  it — now  in  the  interests  of  the 
Republican,  now  of  the  Democratic  party. 
It  thus  becomes  a  corruption  fund  of  the 
worst  kind.  What  the  township  trustee  fails 
to  do,  private  benevolence  supplements.  The 
so-called  charitable  people  who  give  to  beg- 
ging children  and  women  with  baskets  have 
a  vast  sin  to  answer  for.  It  is  from  them  that 
this  pauper  element  gets  its  consent  to  exist." 
In  every  American  city,  as  in  Indianapo- 
lis, there  exists  a  large  number  of  people 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

who,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  life,  can  never 
be  made  good  citizens.  Our  free  institutions 
do  not  make  them  free ;  our  free 


Paupers  as 
Parasites 


schools  do  not  train  them;  our 
churches  do  not  contain  the  means 
of  their  salvation.  It  is  well  to 
face  the  fact  that  the  existence  of  the  great 
body  of  paupers  and  criminals  is  possible 
only  by  feeding  them  in  one  way  or  another 
on  the  life-blood  of  the  community.  It 
is  the  presence  of  this  class  which  adds  ter- 
ror to  poverty.  It  is  they  which  make  intol- 
erable the  lot  of  the  worthy  poor.  The  prob- 
lem of  poverty  and  misfortune  is  a  difficult 
one  at  best.  It  is  rendered  many  times  more 
difficult  by  the  presence  among  the  poor  of 
those  whom  no  condition  could  bring  to  the 
level  of  self-helpful  and  self-respecting  hu- 
manity. The  difficult  problem  of  the  unem- 
ployed becomes  far  more  difficult  when  asso- 
ciated with  the  hopeless  problem  of  the  un- 
employable. It  has  been  said  that  "were  the 
great  wave  of  charity  to  cease  for  a  month, 
pauperism  would  disappear."  The  paupers, 
not  the  poor,  would  perish  were  they  forced 
for  a  month  to  be  self-dependent. 

[115] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

It  is  not  important  to  our  present  dis- 
cussion to  consider  how  these  conditions 
arose.  It  may  be  a  defect  of  human  society 
that  the  law  of  natural  selection  has  not  had 
its  perfect  work.  The  destruction  of  the  un- 
fit has  not  kept  pace  with  their  power  of  re- 
production. We  may  blame  the  kind  influ- 
ence of  charity  for  lack  of  discrimination  in 
its  efforts  for  the  help  of  our  neighbors.  The 
indiscriminate  charity  of  the  middle  ages  is 
responsible  for  much  of  the  misery  of  ours. 
It  is  only  in  very  modern  times  that  charity 
has  had  any  relation  with  justice.  It  is  only 
lately  that  science  has  shown  that  charity  is 
to  be  judged  not  by  its  motives  but  by  its 
results.  "Charity,  falsely  so-called,"  says 
McCulloch,  "covers  a  multitude  of  sins,  and 
sends  the  pauper  out  with  the  benediction, 
'Be  fruitful  and  multiply.'  Such  charity  has 
made  this  element,  has  brought  children  to 
birth,  and  insured  them  a  life  of  misery,  cold, 
hunger,  sickness.  So-called  charity  joins  pub- 
lic relief  in  producing  stillborn  children,  rais- 
ing prostitutes,  and  educating  criminals." 

Whatever  the  causes  of  hereditary  ineffi- 

[116] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

ciency,  it  exists  in  our  civilization.  It  is  part 
of  our  social  fabric.  It  is  an  element  not  less 
difficult  than  the  race  problem  itself.  The 
race  problem  is  indeed  a  phase  of  it,  for  when 
a  race  can  take  care  of  itself  it  ceases  to  have 
a  problem. 

Hereditary  inefficiency    is    therefore  a 
factor  in  society.     It  must  be  considered  as 
a  factor  in  civil  affairs.    In  what 
way  does  it  affect  the  problem  of 


Pauperism 


a  r  actor  in      government  ?    In  municipal  gov- 
Govemment  •  ,          -i       rr 

ernment    its  evil    effects  are  at 


once  apparent.  A  single  group  of  related 
families,  all  helpless  and  hopeless  by  heredity, 
formed  in  the  clean  and  wealthy  city  of  Indi- 
anapolis some  four  per  cent,  of  the  popula- 
tion— 5,000  in  perhaps  125,000.  In  other 
American  cities,  notably  in  San  Francisco, 
with  its  mild  climate  and  proverbial  hospital- 
ity, the  percentage  is  greater,  for  more  of 
these  families  are  represented.  In  no  city 
are  they  absent.  Self-government  by  such 
people  is  a  farce.  No  community  was  ever 
built  up  of  thieves  and  imbeciles.  The  vote 
of  the  dependent  classes  is  always  purchase- 

[117] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

able.  The  co-ordination  and  sale  of  this  vote 
and  of  the  allied  criminal  vote  are  the  work 
of  the  most  dangerous  of  the  dirty  brood  of 
political  bosses.  It  is  the  stock  in  trade  of 
every  king  of  the  slums.  This  vote  can  be 
bought  with  the  money  of  candidates.  It  can 
be  bought  with  spoils  of  office.  It  can  be 
bought  with  public  funds  set  aside  for  pur- 
poses called  charity. 

The  various  forms  of  outdoor  relief 
constitute,  as  McCulloch  has  shown,  "a  cor- 
ruption fund  of  the  worst  kind." 

Of  all  our  enterprises,  the  people  of  the 
United  States  have  been  least  successful  in 
the  management  of  their  cities. 


Corruption 
Fund  of 
Public 
Charity 


This  failure  is  most  complete 
where  the  manipulators  of  pau- 
pers and  criminals  are  boldest 
and  most  effective;  moreover,  the  effluvium 
of  municipal  corruption  flows  out  and  pois- 
ons the  politics  of  the  state  and  the  nation. 
Our  ancestors  suffered  in  their  degree  from 
the  evils  of  force.  Our  descendants  will  find 
themselves  beset  by  the  evils  of  weakness. 
Every  venal,  cowardly,  or  ignorant 


[us] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

voter  is  a  menace  to  the  safety  of  republican 
institutions.  The  essential  purpose  of  popu- 
lar suffrage  is  not  to  secure  good  govern- 
ment, but  to  produce  an  interest  in  civil 
affairs  that  will  sooner  or  later  bring  about 
good  government.  This  growth  in  civic 
knowledge  is  impossible  without  a  foundation 
of  intelligence.  The  choice  of  negro  suffrage 
was  the  wisest  choice  among  the  many 
wrongs  having  their  rise  in  negro  slavery.  It 
was  the  least  of  the  evils,  no  doubt,  but  an 
evil  nevertheless.  Every  evil  is  likely  sooner 
or  later  to  become  a  festering  sore  in  the 
body  politic. 

The  dangers  of  foreign  immigration  lie 
in  the  overflow  to  our  shores  of  hereditary 
unfitness.     The  causes  that  lead 


Foreign 
Immigration 


to  degeneration  have  long  been 
at  work  among  the  poor  of  Eu- 
rope. The  slums  of  every  city 
in  the  Old  World  are  full  of  the  results.  The 
slums  of  London,  filled  for  the  most  part  by 
the  descendants  of  those  whom  war  could  not 
use,  develop  a  type  of  men  who  cannot  make 
a  living  anywhere  under  any  conditions.  Ap- 


[119] 


THE        HEREDITY        OF        RICHARD       ROE 

patently  few  cases  of  hereditary  inefficiency 
exist  in  America  that  could  not  be  traced  back 
through  pauper  lineage  to  dependent  classes 
in  the  Old  World.  It  takes  many  genera- 
tions to  found  a  pauper  stock.  Misfortune, 
sickness,  intemperance,  the  weakness  of  old 
age,  often  lead  to  poverty  and  personal  mis- 
ery. Personal  causes  do  not  lead  to  heredit- 
ary pauperism.  The  essential  danger  of  un- 
restricted immigration  is  not  in  bringing  in 
an  alien  population  strange  to  our  language 
and  customs.  Language  and  customs  count 
for  little  if  the  blood  is  good.  The  children 
learn  our  language,  even  to  the  forgetting  of 
their  own.  Love  of  our  country  is  just  as 
genuine  in  Norwegian  or  German  dialects 
as  it  is  in  English  or  Irish.  There  is  little 
danger,  either,  in  violent  opinions  or  icono- 
clastic theories.  The  red  flag  of  anarchy  will 
not  long  wave  where  real  oppression  does 
not  exist.  At  Castle  Garden  in  New  York, 
we  should  turn  back,  not  those  individuals, 
ill,  aged,  or  infirm,  or  likely  to  become  a  per- 
sonal charge  on  public  charity,  but  should 
rather  reject  those  whose  descendants  are 

[120J 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

likely  through  incompetence  and  vice  to  be  a 
permanent  burden  on  our  social  or  political 
order.  Better  admit  a  hundred  aged  para- 
lytics than  one  white  slaver,  or  one  "Mar- 
garet, mother  of  criminals." 

But  the  immigration  of  poverty,  degra- 
dation, and  disease  makes  government  by  the 
people  more  and  more  difficult. 


Assisted 
Immigration 


Every  family  of  "Jukes"  and 
"Ishmaels"  which  enters  at 
Castle  Garden  carries  with  it  the 
germs  of  pauperism  and  crime.  They  bear 
the  leprosy  and  crime  of  the  Old  World  to 
taint  the  fields  of  the  New.  The  "assisted 
immigration"  to  New  South  Wales  is  to-day 
a  curse  to  Australia.  The  assisted  immigra- 
tion at  Jamestown  years  ago  has  left  its  trail 
of  pauperism  and  crime  from  Virginia  across 
Carolina,  Kentucky,  Indiana,  Missouri,  even 
to  California  and  Oregon.  Wherever  its 
blight  has  gone  there  are  the  same  inefficient 
men,  sickly  women,  frowsy  children,  starved 
horses,  barking  cur  dogs,  carelessness,  vindic- 
tiveness,  and  neglect  of  decency. 

Withdrawal   from   the  competition  of 


[121] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

life,  withdrawal  from  self-helpful  activity, 
aided  by  the  voluntary  or  involuntary  assist- 
ance from  others — these  factors  have  made 
that  which  McCulloch  calls  "the  tribe  of 
Ishmael."  These  conditions  bring  about  the 
same  results  in  all  ages  and  among  all  races, 
among  the  lower  animals  as  well  as  among 
men.  The  same  effects  of  similar  causes  are 
seen  in  the  decline  of  royalty  and  nobility  of 
Europe  as  well  as  the  degradation  of  Euro- 
pean cretins  and  thieves.  There  is  no  progress 
without  competitive  activity,  and  no  race  is  so 
perfect  that  judicious  weeding  out  could  not 
improve  it. 

In  a  thoughtful  book  on  the  national 
life  of  England,   Mr.   Karl    Pearson    finds 
the  outlook   discouraging.      He 
says:  "The  stability  of  the  na- 


National 


Life  of 


tion  depends  essentially  on  the 


nsa  fitter  stock  being  given  sensibly 


greater  fertility  than  the  unfit  stock 

Whether  knowledge  of  what  is  going  on  can 
possibly  bring  about  a  change  of  feeling  I 
cannot  say.  If  it  does  not,  and  we  leave  the 
fertile  but  unfit  one-sixth  to  reproduce  one- 

[122] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

half  the  next  generation,  our  nation  will  soon 
cease  to  be  a  world  power. 

"The  problem  is  simple  in  the  extreme; 
we  have  two  groups  in  the  community,  one 
parasitic  to  the  other.  The  latter  thinks  of 
to-morrow  and  is  childless;  the  former  takes 
no  thought  and  multiplies.  It  can  only  end  as 
the  case  so  often  ends — the  parasite  will  kill 
its  host,  and  so  end  the  tale  for  both  alike." 

But  in  England  this  process  is  facilitated 
by  parasitism  at  the  top  as  well  as  at  the  bot- 
tom. The  whole  array  of  the  non-producing 
rich,  the  crushing  effect  of  war-debt  and  war- 
taxation,  the  weakness  bred  by  the  reversal  of 
selection  in  war,  the  evil  land-laws  which 
check  the  growth  of  self-respecting  yeomanry, 
and  the  feeling  that  it  is  somehow  a  disgrace 
to  work  if  there  is  any  way  of  avoiding  it,  all 
these  are  elements  which  make  it  still  easier 
for  the  nation  to  slip  down  the  inclined  plane 
of  history. 

Mr.  James  H.  Collins  cleverly  says: 
"It  is  just  within  the  possibilities  that  some- 
body may  introduce  into  Parliament  an  Act 
to  Establish  the  Respectability  of  Work. 

[123] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

.  .  .  Anything  that  will  give  work  a  better 
status  is  sure  to  do  the  country  a  lot  of  good. 
The  Britisher  is  not  an  idler  by  any  means. 
He  toils  hard  enough,  but  his  highest  ambi- 
tion is  still  to  work  just  hard  enough  to  get 
just  money  enough  to  stop  work  altogether 
and  be  a  gentleman.  .  .  .  There  is  an  un- 
mistakable belief  in  the  sentiment  of  the  old 
toast  that  'Work  is  the  Curse  of  the  Drinking 
Classes.'  .  .  .  This  makes  money  the  end 
of  business  instead  of  a  by-product,  and  fills 
the  British  world  of  affairs  with  Dombeys 
large  and  small." 

The  uncontributing  Old  Age  Pension  be- 
gins at  the  wrong  end  of  this  problem.  It 
strikes  a  blow  at  the  impulse  of  individual 
self-activity,  as  the  enforced  contributing 
system  of  Germany  strikes  a  blow  at  personal 
freedom. 

What  can  be  done  to  remedy  this  source 
of  evil?  To  know  the  evil  is  to  go  half  way 
toward  its  cure.  Penal  reform,  charities  re- 
form, civil-service  reform,  the  prohibition  of 
pauper  immigration,  education  in  social  science 
— all  these  look  in  the  direction  of  cure.  In 

[124] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

knowledge  lies  the  surest  remedy  for  most 
social  and  political  evils.  Let  us  see  our 
enemy  face  to  face  and  we  can 
strike  him.  What  more  can  be 


Freedom 


which  13      I     done  js  tjle  WQrk  Qf  students  of 
Thraldom'\     .„..,..:.___  determine.     Dr. 


Amos  G.  Warner  has  well  said  that  the 
"true  function  of  charity  is  to  restore  to  use- 
fulness those  who  are  temporarily  unfit,  and 
to  allow  those  unfit  from  heredity  to  become 
extinct  with  as  little  pain  as  possible." 
Sooner  or  later  the  last  duty  will  not  be  less 
important  and  pressing  than  the  first.  Good 
blood  as  well  as  free  schools  and  free  envir- 
onment is  essential  to  the  making  of  a  nation. 
I  have  elsewhere  used  these  words: 
How  long  will  the  Republic  endure?  So 
long  as  the  ideas  of  its  found- 


u  urt  ers     remain     dominant.       How 


of  the 
Republic 


long  will  these  ideas  remain 
dominant?  Just  so  long  as  the 
blood  of  its  founders  remains  dominant  in 
the  blood  of  its  people.  Not  the  blood  of 
Puritans  and  Virginians  alone,  the  original 
creators  of  free  states,  but  the  blood  of  free- 


C125] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

born  men,  be  they  Greek,  Roman,  Frank, 
Saxon,  Norman,  Dane,  Celt,  Scot,  Goth  or 
Samurai.  It  is  a  free  stock  that  creates  a  free 
nation.  Our  Republic  shall  endure  so  long 
as  the  human  harvest  is  good,  so  long  as  the 
movement  of  history,  the  progress  of  science 
and  industry,  leaves  for  the  future  the  best 
and  not  the  worst  of  each  generation. 

The  condition  of  slavery  is  one  favor- 
able for  human  degeneration.     The  survival 
of  the  docile  is  its  essential  fea- 


Slcntery 


ture  in  slavery.  There  is  no 
premium  placed  on  individual- 
ity, no  advantage  in  intelligence,  and  a  posi- 
tive disadvantage  in  the  impulses  of  self-di- 
rection. A  slave  cannot  be  a  man,  and  the 
qualities  of  manhood  are  checked  and  de- 
stroyed in  slavery. 

In  the  slums  of  the  cities  similar  condi- 
tions obtain.  In  the  life  of  hopelessness 
there  can  be  no  premium  on 
hope.  The  "artful  dodger"  is 
a  typical  product  of  the  natural 
selection  of  the  slums.  Kipling's  Badalia 
Herodsfoot  stands  as  a  type  of  its  otherwise 


[126] 


The  Slums 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

worthy  victims.  To  be  well  born  but 
brought  up  in  the  slums  means  to  be  born  to 
premature  death.  The  child  of  the  slums, 
fitted  to  his  environment,  must  come  of  the 
lineage  of  moral  decay. 

In  the  tropics,  conditions  favoring  hu- 
man   degeneration    are    constantly    present. 
The    intense    heat    discourages 


The  Tropics 


physical  or  mental  activity, 
while  the  slight  stress  of  physi- 
cal surroundings  favors  the  weak,  the  vacil- 
lating, the  inert.  No  premium  is  placed  on 
effort,  and  there  is  developed  a  type  of  man 
to  whom  effort  is  impossible.  According  to 
General  Woodruff,  the  effect  of  overmuch 
sunlight  tends  to  personal  degeneration  of 
the  fairer  races.  The  purpose  of  skin-pig- 
ment is  to  protect  the  nervous  system  from 
the  sun's  rays.  A  dark  skin  in  the  tropics  is 
essential  to  the  continued  existence  of  the 
race.  However  this  may  be,  many  of  the 
conditions  under  the  tropics  closely  resemble 
those  seen  under  ill-advised  charity.  Nature 
is  too  kind  and  too  indiscriminating.  As  a 
result,  we  have  as  pauper  races  the  descend- 


[127] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

ants  of  the  once  civilized  and  once  active 
Arabs,  Egyptians  and  Saracens.  With  the 
decline  of  effort  goes  the  failure  of  personal 
will,  and  the  growth  of  the  philosophy  of 
fatalism,  in  which  the  human  will  is  held  to 
be  of  no  worth.  It  is  the  will  of  Allah  that 
the  Arab  should  sleep  in  filth,  and  die  of  rot- 
tenness. It  is  related  by  Professor  Edwin  H. 
Woodruff  that  not  long  ago  a  cesspool  in  a 
palace  at  Cairo  was  to  be  cleansed.  The 
vault  was  opened,  and  two  or  three  of  the 
workmen  were  suffocated  by  the  foul  gases. 
"It  is  Allah's  will,"  said  the  person  in  author- 
ity, "it  is  Allah's  will  that  the  vault  shall  not 
be  disturbed."  So  it  was  closed  again,  that 
its  foulness  might  increase  for  another  cen- 
tury. In  the  tropics  man  knows  little  of  com- 
petition. He  cares  not  for  time.  The  best 
man  is  the  laziest,  and  no  civilized  race  of 
men  has  yet  held  its  own  under  these  condi- 
tions. The  strong  races  were  born  of  hard 
times,  they  have  fought  for  all  they  have 
had,  and  the  strength  of  those  they  have  con- 
quered has  entered  into  their  wills.  They 
have  been  selected  by  competition  and  sifted 

[128] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

by  the  elements.  They  have  risen  through 
struggle  and  they  have  gained  through  mu- 
tual help,  and  by  the  power  of  the  human  will 
they  have  made  the  earth  their  own. 

In  luxury,  again,  are  found  conditions 
of  degeneration.     When  one  has  all  that  he 

wants,  there  is  little  incentive  to 
~  I     strive  for  anything  more.   When 

a  race  is  raised  above  competi- 


tion, there  is  no  premium  on  the 
qualities  that  make  for  life.  The  sheltered 
life  does  not  favor  progress.  Where  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  misery  of  want  is  excluded 
there  is  still  room  for  the  misery  of  ennui,  the 
pressure  of  existence  unresisted  by  effort. 
Much  of  that  degeneration  of  the  higher 
classes  of  Europe,  which  Nordau  has  attrib- 
uted to  the  "inheritance  of  fatigue  and  nerve- 
strain  of  civilization,"  is  simply  personal  and 
not  inherited.  It  is  the  natural  result  of  the 
loss  of  personal  incentive  to  action.  It  is  the 
laziness  and  weakness  engendered  in  the 
paupered  and  sheltered  life.  In  the  society 
in  which  this  form  of  degeneracy  appears  we 
find  a  maximum  of  sense  impressions  and  a 

[129] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

minimum  of  action.  Where  thought  does 
not  go  over  into  action  a  sort  of  mental  dys- 
pepsia is  produced.  To  this  abnormal  condi- 
tion the  term  "degeneration"  has  been  ap- 
plied, but  this  name  is  misleading,  because  it 
implies  more  than  the  actual  truth. 

To  a  phase  of  degeneration  Mr.  Israel 
Zangwill  has  lately  applied  the  clever  desig- 
nation  of   "the  higher   foolish- 


The 

Higher 

Foolishness 


ness."  By  this  is  meant  unbal- 
anced action  and  expression  on 
the  part  of  people  of  culture  or 
education.  It  is  act  or  speech 
"which  makes  the  judicious  grieve"  on  the 
part  of  those  supposed  to  know  better.  Such 
people  lacking  the  saving  grace  of  common 
sense  are  most  of  those  called  by  Nordau 
"degenerates."  With  these  belong  the  "mon- 
key geniuses"  of  Dr.  Hirsch,  the  "border- 
land dwellers"  of  Dr.  Maudsley,  the  "bor- 
derlanders"  of  Mr.  Stead,  the  " d'egeneres 
superieurs"  of  Magnan,  the  "mattoids"  of 
Lombroso,  and,  in  general,  the  inspired  idiots 
and  educated  fools  of  all  ages  and  climes. 
These  people  have  in  common  the  qual- 


[130] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

ity  of  abnormal  mental  action,  verging  into 
insanity  on  the  one  hand,  to  crime  on  an- 
other, and  to  stupidity  on  the  third.  They 
are,  however,  distinguished  from  ordinary 
idiots,  or  lunatics,  or  criminals  by  some  nota- 
ble quality,  by  some  power  of  action  or  ex- 
pression or  attribute  of  genius  which  causes 
them  to  attract  public  notice. 

Sanity  is  the  antidote  for  insanity,  clean- 
liness of  thought  and  action  in  life  for  folly 
and  crime.      It  is  true,    as   has 


The 
Mattoid 


been  said,  that  "vice,  crime,  and 
madness  are  called  by  different 
names  only  through  social  prej- 
udice." In  like  manner  virtue,  purity,  and 
wisdom  are  largely  convertible  terms.  The 
sane  man  is  like  a  well-made  watch — trained 
to  keep  correct  time  under  all  conditions  of 
temptation,  pressure,  or  environment.  The 
"mattoid"  is  full  of  "vibrancy";  he  is  af- 
fected by  all  sorts  of  conditions,  external  and 
internal.  He  is  like  the  watch  which 
changes  its  rate  of  movement  at  all  sorts  of 
intervals,  that  will  run  off  the  whole  twenty- 
four  hours  in  a  minute,  and  then  will  not 


[131] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

move  at  all  for  a  day  to  come.  He  must 
have  a  hard  head  who  would  butt  against  the 
stone  wall  of  society  and  make  an  impression 
upon  it.  The  sound  nervous  system  is  one 
well  buried  in  skull  and  flesh.  It  knows  not 
the  "pride  of  vibrancy,"  the  "bliss  of  the 
beautiful,"  nor  the  mystic  "sensations  of  the 
elect  mind."  It  has  no  love  for  the  "flowers 
of  evil,"  the  "litany  of  Satan,"  nor  any  as- 
pect of  what  Starr  King  called  the  "rotten 
side  of  things."  It  is  satisfied  with  the  life 
and  duties  of  today,  and  can  find  pleasure  in 
these  rather  than  in  frantic  attempts  to  seize 
the  unknown  day  after  to-morrow.  The  so- 
ber man  will  not  believe  that  "that  which  is 
profound  loves  the  mask,"  nor  that  what  ac- 
tually "occurs  is  spoiled  for  art."  To  him,  as 
to  Marcus  Aurelius,  "the  gods  are  still  at  the 
head  of  the  administration,  and  they  will 
have  nothing  but  the  best."  So  in  that  part 
of  the  universe  where  he  finds  himself  he  finds 
also  his  duty. 

"The  normal  man,"  Nordau  wisely 
says,  "with  his  clear  mind,  logical  thought, 
sound  judgment,  and  strong  will,  sees  where 

[132] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

the  degenerate  only  gropes.  He  plans  and 
acts  where  the  latter  dozes  and  dreams.  He 
drives  him  without  effort  from 

all  the  places  where  the  life-springs 
Normal  * 


Man 


of  Nature  bubble  up;  and,  in 
possession  of  all  the  good  things 
of  the  earth,  he  leaves  to  the  impotent  degen- 
erate the  shelter  of  the  hospital,  lunatic  asylum, 
and  prison  in  contemptuous  pity.  Let  us  im- 
agine the  driveling  Zoroaster  of  Nietsche  with 
his  cardboard  lions,  eagles,  and  serpents,  or  the 
noctambulist  Des  Esseintes  of  the  Decadents, 
sniffing  and  licking  his  lips,  or  Ibsen's  'soli- 
tary powerful'  Stockmann,  and  his  Rosmer 
lusting  for  suicide — in  competition  with  men 
who  rise  early,  are  not  weary  before  sunset, 
who  have  clear  heads,  solid  stomachs,  and 
hard  muscles." 

But  in  this  connection  we  may  remember 
that  competition  is  not  destruction.  The 
degenerates  have  been  helped  on  by  their 
rivals  more  than  they  have  been  harmed. 
They  have  been  borne  on  the  shoulders  of 
civilization,  and  it  is  the  altruism  of  science 
which  has  made  their  non-science  compara- 


[133] 


\ 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

tively  safe.  It  is  the  toleration  of  the  sane 
that  gives  the  insane  the  right  to  live.  It  is 
the  power  of  the  strong  that  maintains  the 
weak.  In  the  long  run  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence will  destroy  the  lineage  of  the  deca- 
dents of  today.  No  shelter  can  long  avail 
against  the  "goodness  and  severity  of  God." 
But  the  folly  which  now  exists  is  intrenched 
behind  wisdom.  The  kindness  of  man  post- 
pones the  judgments  of  nature. 

It  is  not  true  that  "genius  is  a  disease  of 
the  nerves,"  as  certain  writers  have  insisted, 
if  by  genius  is  meant  forceful- 
ness  of  any  sort.     Real  effective- 
Genius  /•  •  /• 

ness  arises  from  continuous  ef- 


fort in  high  directions.  We  are 
sometimes  astounded  by  a  single  product  of 
a  man  incapable  of  continuous  thought,  but 
the  world  is  not  moved  by  such  men, 
nor  has  the  literature  of  the  ages  been  pro- 
duced  by  them.  Great  men  live  great  lives. 
The  great  work  is  the  great  life's  impression. 
There  is  nothing  occult,  nothing  mystic,  noth- 
ing hysterical  in  greatness  of  mind  or  heart. 
Disease  of  the  nerves  is  not  genius;  still  less 

[134] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

is  it  an  attribute  of  greatness.  To  do  great 
things  in  life,  to  think  nobly,  to  write  clearly, 
to  have  a  sincere  feeling  for  beauty  and 
grace,  it  is  not  necessary  to  have  broken  any 
of  the  Ten  Commandments. 

Most  of  the  phenomena  of  decay  de- 
scribed by  Nordau  stand  related  to  mental 
disease  at  once  as  cause,  effect,  and  symp- 
tom. Drunkenness,  for  example,  is  the 
cause  of  more  drunkenness,  of  further  decay 
of  will.  It  is  the  symptom  of  the  decay  of 
will.  It  is  the  effect  of  it.  In  like  manner 
the  love  of  mysticism  grows  with  its  license; 
the  love  of  filth  with  what  it  feeds  upon. 
Egomania  increases  with  self-admiration, 
sexual  madness  with  its  own  indulgences. 
The  fantasies  of  those  who  "have  only  to 
hear  of  Buddhism  to  become  converts  to  it" 
furnish  their  own  arguments  and  their  own 
justification.  Hysteria,  catalepsy,  and  echo- 
lalia  have  many  times  taken  unto  themselves 
the  name  of  religion,  and  proved  the  truth 
of  this  religion  by  their  own  excesses. 

Much  of  the  "decadent  literature"  of 
the  day  is  not  the  product  of  the  decadence 

[135] 


THE        HEREDITY        OF        RICHARD       ROE 

of  man.  It  is  not  the  effect  of  "nerve  strain 
of  overwrought  generations  born  too  late  in 
the  dusk  of  the  ages."  It  is  sim- 


Decadent 
Literature 


ply  an  unwholesome  fashion. 
Most  of  it  is  the  work  of  sane 
men  of  mediocre  abilities  who 
throw  themselves  into  grotesque  postures  in 
the  hope  that  they  may  thereby  arrest  the 
fickle  attention  of  the  public.  It  is  the  effort 
of  mountebanks  to  catch  the  people's  eye. 
When  the  public  becomes  accustomed  to 
froth  and  symbolism,  it  is  equally  surprised 
and  delighted  with  sweetness  and  sanity. 
Neurotic  freaks  and  egomaniacs  have  been 
found  in  all  ages.  The  memory  of  those  of 
earlier  ages  has  passed  away,  as  those  of 
to-day  will  soon  be  forgotten.  The  end  of 
the  nineteenth  century  has  no  new  form  of 
"the  higher  foolishness"  which  the  preceding 
centuries  did  not  know.  It  can  only  offer 
better  facilities  for  publicity  than  could  be 
had  in  earlier  times.  There  is  money  now 
in  the  production  of  literature  of  decay.  In 
so  far  as  folly  and  nervous  disorder  are  in- 
nate and  hereditary,  not  individual,  we  have 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  they  are  in  any 

[136] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

sense  a  product  of  the  rush  of  modern  civil- 
ization. 

Most  of  the  degeneration  so  cleverly 
treated  by  Nordau  is  purely  the  result  of  de- 
fects in  the  life  of  the  individual,  in  his  rela- 
tion to  his  environment,  and  the  course  of 
action  by  which  his  character  is  formed. 
Without  going  into  a  detail  for  which  I  have 
neither  space  nor  ability,  I  may  say  that  the 
development  of  mysticism,  symbolism, 
"hearts  insurgent,"  and  general  mental  and 
moral  vagabondage  is  caused  by  the  lack  of 
sober  living  and  of  wholesome  work,  the  lack 
of  motor  ideals  and  of  outlet  for  effort. 

In  the  cities  of  Europe  the  common  man 
has  risen  to  a  life  of  larger  possibilities  and 
greater  opportunities  for  success 


Opportunity 


and    failure    without    adequate 


Wit  out          training  for  such  activity.     Soci- 
ety has  been  compared  to  a  band 


of  schoolboys  in  charge  of  a  railway  train. 
They  know  not  what  to  do  nor  how  to  do  it, 
and  are  more  interested  in  present  enjoyment 
than  in  the  success  of  any  enterprise  intrusted 
to  them.  Small-minded  men  lost  in  a  multi- 


[137] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD      ROE 

plicity  of  impressions  are  likely  to  do  things 
which  suggest  degeneration.  If  to  this  we 
add  the  wide  diffusion  of  corrosive  elements, 
narcotics,  stimulants,  impure  suggestion,  un- 
wholesome living,  we  have  elements  which 
tend  toward  personal  degeneration.  As  their 
influences  affect  many  persons  alike,  they  ap- 
pear as  a  form  of  social  decadence. 

We  find,  moreover,  in  parts  of  Europe, 
the    prevalence  of  "a    strange   drooping    of 
spirit."     This  feeling  that  civil- 
ization   is   confined   in    a   blind 


Drooping 
Spirit 


channel,  a  cul  de  sac,  is  a  nat- 
ural result  of  the  great  increase 
of  the  results  of  sense-perception  without  cor- 
responding outlet  in  action.  "Progress," 
says  Edward  A.  Ross,  referring  to  this  condi- 
tion, "seems  to  have  ended  in  aimless  discon- 
tent. The  schools  have  produced,  according 
to  Bismarck,  ten  times  as  many  over-edu- 
cated young  men  as  there  are  places  to  fill. 
The  thirst  for  culture  has  produced  a  great 
hungry  intellectual  proletariat.  The  forces 
of  darkness  are  still  strong,  and  it  seems 
sometimes  as  if  the  middle  ages  would  swal- 


[138] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF        RICHARD        ROE 

low  up  everything  won  by  modern  struggles. 
It  is  true  that  many  alarms  have  proved 
false,  but  it  is  the  steady  strain  that  tells  on 
the  mood.  It  is  pathetic  to  see  on  the  Conti- 
nent how  men  fear  to  face  the  future.  No 
one  has  the  heart  to  probe  the  next  decade. 
The  outlook  is  bounded  by  the  next  Sunday 
in  the  park  or  the  theatre.  The  people  throw 
themselves  into  the  pleasures  of  the  moment 
with  the  desperation  of  doomed  men  who 
hear  the  ring  of  the  hammer  on  the  scaffold. 
Ibsen,  applying  an  old  sailor's  superstition  to 
the  European  ship  of  state,  tells  how  one 
night  he  stood  on  the  deck  and  looked  down 
on  the  throng  of  passengers,  each  the  victim 
of  some  form  of  brooding  melancholy  or 
dark  presentiment.  As  he  looked  he  seemed 
to  hear  a  voice  crying,  'There's  a  corpse  on 
board!'" 

The  record  of  degeneration  in  music,  in 
art,  in   literature,   in   religion,   as   traced  by 
Nordau,  is  the  record  of  loss  of 
hope  and  loss  of  illusion.     In  so 


Nordau 's 
Degenera- 


far  as  it  is  honest,  not  a  mere 
affectation,   it  is  the  cry  called 


[139] 


THE        HEREDITY       OF        RICHARD        ROE 

out  by  the  misery  of  personal  or  social  decay. 
It  is  the  expression  of  mental  dyspepsia  and 
physical  impotence.  It  finds  a  large  part  of 
its  explanation  in  the  fact  that,  with  the  class 
affected  by  it,  sense-impressions,  feelings,  and 
impulses  have  far  outrun  the  opportunities 
for  action.  The  cure  for  this  condition  is 
found  in  ambition,  effort,  individual  develop- 
ment. It  is  not  the  swift  rush  and  whirl  of 
modern  civilization  which  has  brought  all 
this  to  pass.  It  has  come  rather  from  attain- 
ing the  results  of  this  rush  without  taking 
part  in  its  effort.  A  similar  thought  is  ex- 
pressed by  Kant,  as  quoted  by  Mark  Patti- 
son.  Of  "Schwarmerei,"  or  philosophical 
revery,  he  says:  "This  mental  disease  arises 
from  the  growth  of  a  class  which  has  not  yet 
thorough  science,  yet  is  not  wholly  ignorant. 
It  has  caught  up  notions  on  current  literature 
which  makes  it  think  itself  on  the  same  level 
of  those  who  have  laboriously  studied  the  sci- 
ences. I  see  no  other  means  of  checking  the 
mischief,  except  that  the  schools  should  re- 
form their  method  and  restore  thorough 
teaching  instead  of  that  teaching  of  many 

[140] 


THE   HEREDITY   OF   RICHARD   ROE 

things  which  has  usurped  its  place."  Tho- 
reau  speaks  of  the  derivation  of  "vile"  and 
"villain"  from  via,  way,  and  villa,  village. 
"This  suggests,"  he  says,  "that  kind  of  de- 
generacy villagers  are  liable  to.  They  are 
wayworn  by  the  travel  that  goes  by  and  over 
them  without  traveling  themselves." 

The  evil  effect  of  the  excess  of  sense  im- 
pressions and  of  thought    dissociated    from 
will  and  action  has  been  noted 
many  times  and  in  many  ways. 


Sensation 
j 

When   men    have    made    them- 
selves wise  with  the  lore  of  oth- 


ers,  the  learning  which  ends  in  self  and  does 
not  spend  itself  on  action,  they  have  been 
neither  virtuous  nor  happy.  "Much  learning 
is  a  weariness  of  the  flesh."  Thought  with- 
out action  ends  in  intense  fatigue  of  the  soul, 
the  disgust  with  all  "the  sorry  scheme  of 
things  entire,"  which  is  the  mark  of  the  un- 
wholesome and  insane  philosophy  of  pessim- 
ism. This  philosophy  finds  its  condemnation 
in  the  fact  that  it  has  never  yet  been  trans- 
lated into  pure  and  helpful  life. 

In  like  manner  sentiment  not  woven  in- 

[141] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

to  action  fails  to  be  a  source  of  effectiveness 
or  of  happiness.  "If  thou  lovest  me,"  said 
Christ  to  Simon  Peter,  "feed  my  lambs." 
Genuine  love  works  itself  out  in  self-spend- 
ing, in  doing  something  for  the  help  or  pleas- 
ure of  those  beloved.  Religious  sentimental- 
ism,  whatever  the  form  it  may  take,  if  disso- 
ciated from  action,  has  only  evil  effects.  Ap- 
peal to  the  emotions  for  emotion's  sake  has 
been  a  great  factor  in  human  deterioration. 
Much  that  has  been  called  "degeneration" 
in  modern  social  life  is  due  to  the  predomi- 
nance of  sensory  impressions  over  motor 
movement.  The  mind  passes  through  a 
round  of  sensations,  emotions  called  up  by 
literature,  music,  art,  religion,  which  may  not 
have  any  direct  bearing  on  human  conduct. 
Their  aggregate  influence  on  the  idle  brain  is 
always  evil.  And  the  misery  of  motor  pa- 
ralysis, of  intellectual  pauperism,  is  felt  as  the 
disease  of  ennui.  The  remedy  for  evils  of 
revery,  ennui,  narcotism,  and  the  like,  is  to  be 
found  in  action.  The  knowledge  of  this 
fact  constitutes  the  strength  of  the  Salvation 
Army  movement.  The  victim  of  mental  de- 

[142] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

terioration,  the  "opium  fiend"  or  the  inebri- 
ate is  given  something  to  do.  He  is  not  to 
wear  out  the  little  force  he  has  left  in  ineffect- 
tive  remorse.  Better  let  him  beat  a  big  drum 
and  make  night  hideous  with  unmusical  song 
than  to  settle  down  to  the  dry  rot  of  revery 
or  the  wet  rot  of  emotional  regret.  Some- 
thing to  do  and  the  will  to  act  furnishes  the 
remedy  for  all  forms  of  social  or  personal 
discontent. 

Not  every  sense  impression  can  demand 
distinct  response.     It  is  the  function  of  the 
intellect  to  sift  these  impressions, 


The 

Power  of 
Attention 


turning  over  into  action  only 
those  in  which  action  is  desirable 
or  wise.  The  power  of  atten- 
tion is  one  of  the  most  valuable  attributes  of 
the  trained  mind.  And  the  essential  of  this 
power  is  in  the  suppression  by  the  will  of  all 
impulses  which  do  not  concern  the  present 
need  of  action. 

As  the  normal  workings  of  the  mind  are 
reducible  to  sensation,  thought,  will,  and  ac- 
tion, so  the  abnormal  workings  may  be  due  to 
defects  of  any  one  of  these  elements.  We 


[143] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

may  have  defects  of  sensation,  defects  of 
thought,  vacillation  of  will,  and  inaccuracy  of 
action.  Hyperaesthesia,  anaes- 


Defeds  of 

Mind 


thesia,  sensory  weakness,  appear 
in  the  uncertain  action  of  the 
muscles  guided  by  the  ill-formed 
or  over-informed  brain.  The  defects  and 
diseases  of  the  brain  itself  appear  in  many 
ways,  ranging  from  oddity  or  folly  to  the 
extreme  of  idiocy  or  mania.  Many  of 
the  "psychic  phenomena"  along  "the  border- 
land of  spirit,"  which  occupy  a  large  part  in 
current  literature,  are  features  of  insanity. 
The  phenomena  of  hysteria,  faith  cure,  open- 
ness to  suggestion,  subjective 
imagery,  mysticism,  are  not  in- 
dications of  spiritual  strength, 
but  of  decay  and  disintegration  of  the  nerves. 
The  ecstasy  of  unbalanced  religious  excite- 
ment and  the  stupor  of  a  drunken  debauch 
may  belong  to  the  same  category  of  mental 
phenomena.  Both  point  toward  moral  and 
spiritual  weakness.  There  are  no  occult  or 
"latent  powers"  of  the  mind  except  those 
which  have  become  useless  in  changed  condi- 


[144] 


Hysteria 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

tions,  or  which  belong  to  the  process  of  dis- 
integration. If  a  man  crosses  his  eyes  and  is 
thus  enabled  to  see  objects  double,  we  do  not 
regard  him  as  having  developed  a  "latent 
power"  of  vision.  He  has  simply  destroyed 
the  normal  co-ordination  of  such  power. 
One  does  not  increase  the  strength  of  a  rope 
by  untwisting  its  strands.  The  effectiveness 
of  life  depends  upon  the  co-ordination  and  co- 
operation of  the  parts  of  the  nervous  system. 
Its  strands  must  be  kept  together.  To  move 
in  a  state  of  revery,  "to  live  in  two  worlds  at 
once,"  to  be  unable  to  separate  memory  pic- 
tures from  realities,  all  these  are  forms  of 
nervous  disintegration.  Every  phase  of  them 
can  be  found  in  the  madhouse.  The  end  of 
such  conditions  is  death.  The  healthy  mind 
should  combat  all  tendencies  toward  disinte- 
gration. It  can  be  clean  and  strong  only  by 
being  true. 

In  like  manner  the  influence  of  all  drugs 
which  affect  the  nervous  system  must  be  in  the 
direction  of  disintegration.  The  healthy 
mind  stands  in  clear  and  normal  relations 
with  Nature.  It  feels  pain  as  pain.  It  feels 

[J45] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

action  as  pleasure.  The  drug  which  conceals 
pain  or  gives  a  false  pleasure  when  pleasure 
does  not  exist  forces  a  lie  upon  the  nervous 
system.  The  drug  which  disposes  to  revery 
rather  than  to  work,  which  makes  us  feel  well 
when  we  are  not  well,  destroys  the  sanity  of 
life.  All  stimulants,  depressants,  narcotics, 
and  tonics  which  affect  the  nervous  system  in 
whatever  way  reduce  the  truthfulness  of  sen- 
sation, thought,  and  action.  Toward  insan- 
ity all  such  influences  lead;  and  their  effect, 
slight  though  it  be,  is  of  the  same  nature  as 
mania.  The  man  who  would  see  clearly, 
think  truthfully,  and  act  effectively  must 
avoid  them  all.  Emergency  aside,  he  cannot 
safely  force  upon  his  nervous  system  even  the 
smallest  falsehood.  And  here  lies  the  one 
great  unanswerable  argument  for  total  absti- 
nence; not  abstinence  from  alcohol  alone,  but 
from  all  nerve  poisons  and  emotional  ex- 
cesses. The  man  who  would  be  sane  must 
avoid,  emergencies  excepted,  all  nerve  excit- 
ants, nerve  soothers,  and  "nerve  foods,"  as 
well  as  trances,  ecstasies,  and  similar  abnor- 
mal relations  to  the  external  world.  If  he 

[146] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

would  keep  his  mind  he  must  never  "lose  his 
head"  save  in  the  rest  of  normal  sleep. 

Great  work  is  not  accomplished  under 
the  influence  of  drugs,  least  of  all  those  nerve 
depressants  which  pass  as  "stimulants."  The 
great  thoughts  and  great  deeds  which  move 
the  world  are  those  of  men  who  live  soberly, 
whose  nervous  systems  record  truthfully  the 
facts  of  nature  and  of  life,  and  whose  nerve- 
responses  are  in  perfect  adjustment. 

What  is  true  of  man  is  true  of  other 
animals  in  their  degree,  and  true  of  nations 
as  well.     For  a  nation  is  an  ag- 
gregation  of   many   men,    as    a 
man  is  a  coalition  of  many  cells. 


The 
Mind  of 


In  the  life  of  a  nation,  Lowell 


tells  us,  "three  roots  bear  up  Dominion — 
Knowledge,  Will,  the  third  Obedience,  the 
great  tap-root  of  all."  This  relation  corre- 
sponds to  the  nervous  sequence  in  the  individ- 
ual. And  as  in  general  the  ills  of  humanity 
are  due  to  untruth  fulness  in  thought  and  ac- 
tion, so  are  the  collective  ills  of  nations  due 
to  national  folly,  vacillation,  and  disobedi- 
ence. The  laws  of  national  greatness  expand 

,» 

[147] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

themselves  from  the  laws  which  govern  the 
growth  of  the  single  cell. 

From  all  institutions  a  certain  form  of 
degeneration  must  arise,  because  all  institu- 
tions tend  in  some  degree  to  do 


Institutions 


away  with  individual  effort.  A 
common  creed  for  men  weakens 
the  force  of  individual  belief.  Common 
ceremonies  destroy  the  spontaneity  and  per- 
sonality of  the  feelings  they  represent.  Right 
action  by  statute  and  convention  is  in  some 
degree  opposed  to  virtue  by  personal  initia- 
tive. Between  unregulated  individualism  or 
anarchy,  and  all-controlling  institutions  or 
slavery,  there  must  always  be  a  just  mean. 
To  find  and  maintain  this  just  mean  from 
generation  to  generation  is  the  function  of 
social  reform.  The  reform  of  the  day  has 
been  always  in  the  direction  of  greater  per- 
sonal freedom.  "As  a  snow  bank  grows 
where  there  is  a  lull  in  the  wind,"  says  Tho- 
reau,  "so  where  there  is  a  lull  in  the  truth, 
institutions  spring  up;  by  and  by  the  truth 
blows  over  them  and  takes  them  away."  All 
forms  of  tyranny  have  their  beginning  in 

[148] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

kindness.  Paternalism  in  time  hardens  into 
oppression  and  checks  the  growth  of  the  in- 
dividual man,  who  should  become  responsible 
to  himself  and  for  himself.  The  intelligence 
and  freedom  of  one's  neighbors,  not  the  force 
of  statute  nor  the  power  of  arms,  are  the 
guarantee  of  social  security. 

Causes  of  pauperism  may  be  found  in 
other  forms  of  giving  as  well  as  in  those  rec- 
ognized    as    charity.       Mental 


Mental 
Pauperism 


pauperism  is  produced  when 
men  are  given  truth  instead  of 
being  trained  to  search  for  it. 
There  are  schools  which  tend  to  make  intel- 
lectual paupers  instead  of  training  men  to 
think  for  themselves.  There  is  a  moral  pau- 
perism induced  by  the  giving  of  precepts. 
Right  conduct  must  be  individual  if  it  is  to 
have  stability.  The  doing  of  an  honest  piece 
of  work  honestly  may  have  more  force  in 
moral  training  than  a  hundred  sermons.  In 
like  manner  spiritual  pauperism  may  be  pro- 
duced by  religious  instruction.  Each  man 
must  make  his  own  religion.  He  must  form 
his  own  ideals.  In  the  degree  that  he  is  re- 


[149] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

ligious  he  must  in  time  become  his  own  high 
priest,  as  in  the  degree  that  he  is  effective  he 
must  be  his  own  king. 

I  have  elsewhere  on  many  occasions 
spoken  of  the  reversed  selection  of  war.  Like 
the  seed  is  the  harvest.  War  destroys  the  best 
human  seed,  leaving  the  weaker  to  germinate. 
Hence  after  every  war  "the  human  harvest  is 
bad."  Hence  comes  the  final  and  bitter 
truth,  the  essence  of  the  history  of  every  war- 
like nation,  as  thus  expressed  by  Benjamin 
Franklin:  "Wars  are  not  paid  for  in  war 
time;  the  bill  comes  later!" 

In  connection  with  our  knowledge  of 
Eugenics,  it  is  clear  that  with  the  extension 
of  the  science  two  results  must 


Artificial 
Selection 


follow.  The  first  is  a  tendency 
towards  wiser  mating  on  the 
part  of  men  and  women  of  intel- 
ligence and  education.  The  second  is  the  lim- 
itation by  public  authority  of  the  marriage  of 
the  defective,  the  insane,  and  the  criminal. 
In  the  latter  respect,  there  must  be  natural 
limitations.  The  public  must  give  the  indi- 
vidual the  benefit  of  every  doubt,  for  its  own 


[  1501 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

machinery  of  police  officers,  Justices  of  the 
Peace,  and  guardians  of  the  poor  is  not  above 
reproach.  The  defective  has,  at  least,  the 
right  to  be  judged  by  a  jury  of  his  peers,  be- 
fore he  is  condemned  to  celibacy  or  to  the 
quasi-sterilization  known  as  vasectomy.  In 
these  matters,  the  state  cannot  take  a  radical 
position  until  its  own  methods  are  assured  to 
be  the  methods  of  impartial  science. 

A  third  result  is  sometimes  the  dream  of 
enthusiasts,  the  formation  of  a  superman  by 
the  processes  of  selective  breeding,  the  finest  of 
of  all  fine  arts  which  deal  objectively  with 
life.  The  result  could  be  reached,  so  far  as 
physical  and  mental  characteristics  are  con- 
cerned, in  a  few  generations  if  the  best  of 
men  and  women  could  be  induced  to  submit 
themselves  to  the  methods  of  selection. 

The  name  "selection"  has  long  been 
used  for  the  process  by  which  breeds  or  races 
of  domestic  animals  or  plants  have  been 
formed  in  the  past,  the  process  by  which  to- 
day the  skillful  breeder  can  develop  new 
forms  at  will.  It  is  the  "magician's  wand" 
by  which  the  breeder  can  summon  up  any 

[151] 


THE      HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

form  of  animal  or  plant  that  may  meet  his 
needs  or  delight  his  fancy. 

In  general  the  production  of  a  new  race 
of  animals  or  plants  in  domestication  is  the 
outcome  of  a  number  of  factors,  in  which  the 
human  will  plays  a  leading  part,  a  part  which 
increases  with  the  complexity  of  the  result 
attained.  In  this  process  we  have,  in  gen- 
eral, the  following  stages :  — 

i.  Unconscious  selection,  with  the  sepa- 
ration of  those  chosen  from  the  mass. 

2.  Conscious  selection  of  the 


The  Fine 
Art  of 
Breeding 


non-desirable  individuals. 

3.  Conscious      selection      di- 
rected towards   definite   or  spe- 
cial ends. 

4.  Crossing  with  other  races  or  hybrid- 
izing with  other  species,  in  order  to  increase 
the  range  of  variation  or  to  add  or  to  com- 
bine certain  specific  desirable  qualities,  while 
eliminating  those  undesirable,  this  accompan- 
ied by  conscious  selection  directed  towards 
definite  ends. 

On  this  last  group  of  processes  selection 
as  a  fine  art  must  depend.  The  successful  ex- 


[152] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

periments  of  Luther  Burbank  with  the  cactus, 
the  walnut,  the  plum,  the  daisy  and  a  multi- 
tude of  other  plants  come  under  this  fourth 
head.  To  the  same  class  belongs  the  sheep- 
breeding  of  Australia,  the  development  of 
race-horses,  and  all  important  work  in  the 
improvement  of  domestic  animals  and  plants 
for  whatever  purpose. 

At  the  best,    the    mating    of  man  has 
rarely  advanced  beyond  the  second  stage,  the 
choice  of  the  best  available,  and 


Breeding 
of  the 


in  more  than  half  the  cases,  even 


_  in  civilized  countries,  mere  pro- 

ouperman  .        ...  , 

pmquity  is  the  main  determining 


factor. 

It  is  evident  that  the  human  race  is  quite 
as  plastic  as  the  horse  or  sheep,  and  that  if 
mating  could  be  carried  toward  definite  ends, 
even  for  a  few  generations,  there  might  be 
startling  results.  It  would  be  easy  in  a  few 
generations  under  competent  control  to 
standardize  strength,  beauty,  endurance  or 
virtue.  But  there  seems  to  be  no  possibility 
that  any  group  of  scientific  men  could  ever 
be  called  on  to  exercise  such  control.  More- 

[153] 


THE        HEREDITY        OF        RICHARD       ROE 

over,  those  best  worth  while  would  never  sub- 
mit to  it.  The  best  of  men  and  of  women 
will  always  choose  their  mates  for  them- 
selves. The  artificial  breeding  of  the  super- 
man, if  such  a  thing  can  be  conceived  as  a 
practical  matter  for  the  state  to  undertake, 
would  defeat  its  own  ends.  It  would  breed 
out  of  existence  the  two  most  important  fac- 
tors the  race  has  won,  so  far  as  mating  is 
concerned.  These  are  love  and  initiative. 
The  superman  produced  by  official  eugenics 
would  not  take  his  fate  into  his  own  hands, 
and  his  descendants  would  not  know  the 
meaning  of  love. 

The  practice  of  Eugenics,  has  then,  its 
limitations,  and  the  Richard  Roe  of  the  future 
will  be  a  chip  of  the  same  block  as  the  Rich- 
ard Roe  of  the  past. 

I  made  the  statement  above  that  Rich- 
ard Roe  had  twice  as  many  ancestors  as  his 
father  or  his  mother.  This  is 


Counting 
One's 


self-evident,    and    at    the    same 

time  untrue,  because  father  and 
Ancestors  ,  ,.,       , 

mother  alike  have  counted  the 


same  ancestors    many    times    apiece.     By  a 

[154] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF       RICHARD       ROE 

thousand  strains,  for  example,  each  of  us 
leads  back  to  Alfred  the  Great.  Over  and 
over  again  in  any  line  of  ancestry  strains  of 
blood  have  crossed,  and  the  same  person,  and 
therefore  the  whole  of  this  person's  ances- 
tors, will  be  found  in  different  places  in  the 
individual  pedigree.  This  must  happen  doz- 
ens of  times  in  most  lines  of  ancestry.  The 
lack  of  old  records  obscures  this  fact.  That 
something  of  the  sort  must  occur  is  evident 
from  the  fact  that  the  child  of  to-day  must 
have  had  at  the  time  of  Alfred  the  Great  an 
ancestry  of  870,672,000,000  persons.  In 
the  time  of  William  the  Conqueror  (thirty 
generations)  this  number  reaches  8,598,094,- 
592.  This  is  shown  by  the  ordinary  process 
of  computation — two  parents,  four  grand- 
parents, eight  great-grandparents,  and  so  on. 
As  the  aggregate  of  Englishmen  in  Alfred's 
time,  or  even  in  William's,  was  but  a  very 
small  fraction  of  these  numbers,  most 
of  these  ancestors  must  have  been  re- 
peated many  times  in  the  calculation. 
Each  person  who  leaves  descendants  is 
a  link  in  the  great  chain  of  life,  or  rather 

[155] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

a  strand  in  life's  great  network.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  the  blood  of  each  person  in  Alfred's 
time  who  left  capable  descendants  is  repre- 
sented in  every  family  of  England  of  strict 
English  descent.  In  other  words,  almost 
every  Englishman  is  descended  from  Alfred 
the  Great,  as,  very  likely,  also  from  the  peas- 
ant woman  whose  cakes  Alfred  is  reputed  to 
have  allowed  to  burn.  Moreover,  there  are 
few,  if  any,  who  do  not  share  the  blood  of 
William  the  Conqueror;  and  most  ancestral 
lines,  if  they  could  be  traced,  would  go  back 
to  him  by  a  hundred  different  strains.  In 
fact  there  are  few  families  in  the  south  and 
east  of  England  which  have  not  more  Nor- 
man blood  than  the  present  royal  family. 
The  house  of  Guelph  holds  the  throne  not 
through  nearness  to  William,  but  through 
primogeniture,  a  thing  very  different  from 
heredity. 

The  late  Mr.  Edward  J.  Edwards,  of 
Minneapolis,  has  furnished  some  very 
interesting  studies  in  genealogy  yet  unpublished. 
These  concern  the  lineage  of  his  little  daughter, 
my  niece,  Mary  Stockton  Edwards.  Mr. 

[156] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

Edwards  found  that  the  little  girl,  like  millions 
of  others,  is  descended  through  at  least  two 
different  lines  from  William  the 


Lineage  of 
a  Little 
Qirl 


Conqueror.  The  lineage,  on  the 
one  hand,  leads  back  in  thirty -two 
generations  through  the  family 
names  of  Jordan,  Hawley,  Waldo,  Lake,  Elder- 
kin,  Drake,  Grenville,  Courtney,  Gilbert,  Pri- 
deux,  Denys,  de  Bohun,  and  Plantagenet  to 
William.  Sir  Humphrey  de  Bohun  married 
Elizabeth  Plantagenet,  daughter  of  King  Ed- 
ward I.  In  the  ancestry  of  King  Edward  are 
Saxon  kings  Cedric,  Egbert,  Alfred,  and  Ethel- 
red,  while  intermarriage  with  other  royal  lines 
brings  in  Hengist,  Hugh  Capet,  Charle- 
magne, Otto  the  Great,  Duncan,  Rurik,  Igor, 
San  Fernando,  and  a  host  of  other  notables 
of  whom  one  would  have  less  right  to  be 
proud.  The  Courtneys,  Earls  of  Devon,  are 
again  descended  from  the  royal  lines  of 
France  (Hugh  Capet)  and  Russia,  but  not 
from  William  the  Conqueror.  To  Courtney 
and  Plantagenet  the  lineage  of  the  Edwards 
family  along  other  lines  has  been  traced. 
The  seventy  family  names,  more  or  less, 


[157] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 

with  perhaps  a  thousand  representatives,  in 
the  first  line  traced  out  by  Mr.  Edwards,  are 
only  so  many  individuals  of  billions,  if  there 
were  no  duplications.  If  there  were  no  repe- 
titions, there  would  be  instead  of  the  thous- 
and known  ancestors,  four  billions  of  persons 
between  Mary  Stockton  Edwards  and  the 
time  of  William  the  Conqueror.  This  gene- 
alogy is  therefore  but  a  strand  from  an  enor- 
mous network,  which,  if  written  out  in  full, 
would  cover  the  earth  with  names.  Only  the 
family  pride  of  the  Courtneys  and  Drakes 
caused  even  this  little  of  personal  descent  and 
personal  history  to  be  retained.  Their  pride 
permitted  this  plebeian  record  of  the  plebeian 
descendants  of  the  Puritan  John  Drake  of 
Windsor  and  of  Rufus  Jordan  of  Jordan  in 
Devon  to  be  joined  to  the  sacred  annals  of 
the  English  peerage. 

Most  of  the  English  people  named  in 
these  records  lived  in  Devon  or  Somerset, 
from  which  regions  the  Ameri- 
can representatives  came  to 
America.  The  subordinate 
lines  traced  out  lead  to  the  earls 


All 

Englishmen 
of  Royal 
Lineage 


[158] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

of  these  countries.  They  lead  also  to  many 
other  noble  lines  in  England  and  Scotland. 
It  is  certain,  however,  that  in  this  there  is 
nothing  whatever  that  is  exceptional  or  even 
unusual.  These  people  in  America  were 
of  the  Pilgrim  type,  plain  farmers,  squires, 
and  shipwrights,  with  a  lineage  or  char- 
acter in  nowise  singular.  Their  sole  im- 
portant heritage  was  the  Puritan  con- 
science; not  their  Norman  blood,  which  they 
shared  with  all  their  neighbors.  With  these 
were  other  traits,  good  or  bad,  characteristic 
of  their  actual  ancestry.  "No  Devon  man, 
nor  Somerset  either,  ever  did  more  work  than 
his  maker  made  him."  This  feature  is  just 
as  well  marked  in  New  England  as  the  "Puri- 
tan conscience"  itself. 

Studies  of  this  kind  show  clearly  that 
primogeniture  is  mainly  responsible  for  the 
difference  between  Roundhead  and  Cavalier, 
between  Royalist  and  Puritan.  Roundheads 
and  Puritans  were  descended  from  daughters 
and  younger  brothers.  On  one  of  Crom- 
well's battle  flags  were  these  words:  "We 
do  not  see  why  the  elder  son  should  have 

[159] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

everything  and  we  have  nothing."  The  "blue 
blood"  flows  only  in  the  veins  of  the  eldest 
son.  But  the  eldest  son  of  the  eldest  son 
forms  but  a  very  small  fragment  of  the 
whole.  Galton's  remark  to  the  effect  that 
the  character  of  England  has  suffered 
through  the  segregation  of  its  strongest  rep- 
resentatives as  nobility  and  their  exposure  to 
the  deteriorating  influences  of  ease  and  un- 
earned power  is  scarcely  justified.  A  few  in- 
dividuals have  suffered,  but  not  England. 
They  are  only  the  conspicuous  few.  The  rest 
have  joined  the  mass  of  common  men  whose 
greatness  makes  England  great. 

Samuel  Johnson  remarks  that  primo- 
geniture is  a  most  excellent  practice:  "It  en- 
sures that  there  shall  be  but  one  fool  in  the 
family." 

One  of  the  many  daughters  of  some 
king  marries  a  nobleman ;  a  later  scion  of  no- 
bility is  joined  to  some  squire; 


Primogeni-       some    daughter    of    a    squire    is 
lure  married    to     a     farmer.       The 

farmer's     children     thus     have 

royal  blood  in  their  veins.      Or,  by  reverse 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

process,  plebeian  blood  may  enter — and  to  its 
advantage — the  bluest  of  nobility.  The 
thirty  generations  since  William's  time  each 
contain  a  far  and  wide  mixture  of  blood. 
That  the  descendants  of  these  crosses  are 
alive  to-day  indicates  that  in  the  main  each 
individual  has  a  sound  heredity.  For  a  rot- 
ten link  means  the  breaking  of  the  chain. 
Even  royal  blood  is  not  necessarily  degener- 
ate. That  which  was  so  has  been  strength- 
ened by  plebeian  strains.  There  can  be  few 
if  any  Englishmen  or  Americans  to-day  but 
have  royal  blood  in  their  veins.  There  is 
probably  not  a  king  living  who  has  not  some- 
where in  his  ancestry  the  bar  sinister  of  the 
common  peasant.  For  of  one  blood,  after 
all,  are  all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  as  well 
as  the  men  that  make  up  these  nations. 

Another    necessary    conclusion    is    this, 
that  race  characteristics  imply  direct  personal 

relationship    among   those    who 

Origin  of         exhibit  them.     The  Englishmen 

the  English          r  «.    A  11 

*  or  to-day  are  such  because  they 

are  related  by  blood.     They  are 


the    variously    intermingled    descendants    of 

[161] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF       RICHARD       ROE 

some  few  robust  families  of  a  thousand  years 
ago,  a  hundred  thousand  of  them  at  the  most. 
"Saxon  and  Norman  and  Dane  are  we." 
From  these  families — Dane,  Norman,  and 
Saxon — the  weak,  the  infertile,  and  the  un- 
fortunate are  constantly  undergoing  elimina- 
tion, leaving  the  strong  and  fecund  to  persist. 
The  withered  branches  are  only  kept  in  ex- 
istence through  misplaced  charity  which  con- 
tinues the  pauper,  or  through  bad  social  con- 
ditions which  propagate  the  criminal.  Pau- 
perism, criminality,  and  folly  have  their  lin- 
eage, but  it  is  not  a  long  one ;  and  wiser  coun- 
cils will  make  it  shorter  than  it  now  is.  This 
persistence  of  the  strong  shows  itself  in  the 
prevalence  of  the  leading  qualities  in  the 
dominant  strains.  To  these  dominant  ances- 
tors every  line  of  deviation  will  be  found  to 
lead,  when  we  come  to  follow  it,  backward. 
In  following  the  pedigree  of  an  individual 
backward  for  a  thousand  years,  we  find  that 
millions  of  duplications  must  occur  in  his  an- 
cestry. That  is,  thousands  of  persons  would 
be  reached  from  one  to  a  thousand  times  each 
in  the  following  up  of  different  ancestral 

[162] 


THE       HEREDITY       OF      RICHARD      ROE 

lines.  The  growth  of  colonial  types  comes 
from  the  narrowing  of  the  range  of  crossing 
and  from  intermarriage  with  lines  not  Eng- 
lish, which  occurs  most  frequently  outside  of 
England.  This  is  especially  true  in  the 
United  States.  But  in  a  few  centuries  these 
same  conditions  will  unite  to  form  a 
"Brother  Jonathan"  as  definite  in  qualities 
and  as  "set  in  his  ways"  as  his  ancestor,  the 
traditional  "John  Bull." 

And  these  again  are  modified,  and  for 
the  worse,  by  the  reversed  selection  of  war 
in  England  which  has  cut  off  the  strong 
young  men,  John  Bulls  in  possibility,  and  in 
America  by  the  unrestricted  emigration, 
which  has  cast  us  in  a  melting  pot  with  the 
alloy  of  the  oppressed  of  all  nations,  to  our 
general  advantage  perhaps,  in  the  first  place, 
but  now,  it  may  be,  being  carried  too  far. 

Race  types  thus  arise  from  the  "survival 
of  the  existing,"  its  best  results  modified  and 
preserved  by  the  "survival  of 
the  fittest."  Actual  presence  in 
a  country  of  certain  ancestral 
stocks  is  the  first  element.  Their 


The  Sur- 
vival of  the 
Existing 


[163] 


THE      HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD      ROE 

characters  become  workable,  durable,  and  at 
last  "ineradicable"  by  the  survival  of  those 
in  whom  those  characters  are  elements  of 
life. 

If  the  heredity  of  Richard  Roe  is  "un- 
workable," it  cuts  off  in  the  end  his  line  of 
descent.     The  nation  at  last  is 

built  up  by  the  men  who   can 
Wholesome       .„,„  care  of  themselves  and  have 


something  left  over  for  the  com- 


mon welfare.  Strength  begets  strength  and 
wisdom  leads  to  wisdom.  "Progress  towards 
some  upward  ideal  of  living  among  men  is 
the  surest  fact  in  history."  "There  is  always 
room  for  the  man  of  force,  and  he  makes 
room  for  many."  It  is  the  strong,  wise,  and 
good  of  the  past  who  have  made  civilization 
possible.  It  is  the  great  human  men,  the 
"men  in  the  natural  order,"  that  now  and  for 
all  time  determine  the  current  of  life.  "The 
earth,"  Emerson  tells  us,  "is  upheld  by  the 
veracity  of  good  men.  They  keep  the  world 
wholesome." 


[164] 


THE       HEREDITY      OF      RICHARD       ROE 


w 


HAT  of  the  end  ? —  O,  not  of  your  glory, 

Not  of  your  wealth  or  your  fame  that  will  live 
Half  as  long  as  this  pellet  of  dust  !  — 
Out  in  the  night  there's  an  army  marching, 
Nameless,  noteless,  empty  of  glory, 
Ready  to  suffer  and  die  and  forgive, 
Marching  onward  in  simple  trust, 

Wearing  their  poor  little  toy  love-tokens 
Under  the  march  of  the  terrible  skies  ! 

Waving  their  voicelessly  grand  good-byes, 
Secretly  trying,  sometimes,  to  pray. 


Marching  out  of  the  endless  ages, 
Marching  out  of  the  dawn  of  time, 

Endless  columns  of  unknown  men, 
Endless  ranks  of  the  stars  o'er-arching, 
Endless  ranks  of  an  army  marching 
Numberless  out  of  the  numberless  ages, 
Men  out  of  every  race  and  clime, 
Marching  steadily,  now  as  then." 

Alfred  Noyes  :  "  Rank  and  File." 


[165] 


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